Crew Size feature request - D-Tools Forum

ekalpakoff · 12-29-2009, 06:55 PM

There are some items that get installed that require multiple people to install. Heavy items, large items, awkward items. It would be nice to have a field to input required crew size into the labor of an item. This could also flag the engineer that they need to account for the additional crews travel and installation time.

To take it a step further it would be nice if D-tools asked the engineer if he/she would like to automatically add the additional project labor hours to have a second crew member on site as a result of having an item that required multiple people in the project.

ChristianB · 12-29-2009, 07:02 PM

Great idea! There are seveal items that need more than two hands. Motorized screens, equipment racks, large speaker systems or just a projector mounted in an odd place.

**Dave Kirn** · 12-29-2009, 10:33 PM

Nice feature request - it would definately be useful

grichards · 12-29-2009, 11:55 PM

why not just double the labor hours for the item?

i think of labor hours as "man hours". if it takes 2 people 4 hours then labor hours is 8.

**Dave Kirn** · 12-30-2009, 02:59 PM

I think that is what everyone does currently - at least that is what we do. However by doing that there is no indication that more than one man is needed. If an install shows 8 hours you will schedule 1 tech, however what you really need is 2 techs for 4 hours.

David_Haddad · 12-30-2009, 04:18 PM

I can't think of any time where I needed the software to tell me that 2 men were required :-). Maybe we should also add a field on any item that takes longer then 4 hours to install for reminding techs they may need to go to the bathroom :p?

grichards · 12-30-2009, 05:21 PM

this seems like an excessive feature.

If you really needed to, i think you could effectively accomplish the same thing by creating a separate phase for these types of items. phase "Site" is for one tech, phase "Site 2" is for two tech's, or something of the like.

the problem i could foresee is that you're dividing the intent of a single database field in two. Namely, you want it to mean total man-hours in one instance and hours-per-man another. If you're not aware of that discrepancy, then reports and other analysis down the line might end up being skewed. (i.e. I ran a report for total hours to bill, and came up with 4. but that is 4 hours for 2 techs, so i would only bill half the time if i wasn't aware)

just some thoughts...

ekalpakoff · 12-30-2009, 08:16 PM

Considering that D-Tools as a cost estimation software package I fail to see why something that could be utilized to better cost estimate or catch an "i got ya" in a project would be an "excessive feature"?

Say for example your client would like you break up your project into (2) proposals to satisfy their purchasing dept. The item that requires multiple workers would appear on one proposal but not the other. Then process a change order on one of the proposals. It could escape your mind that you were accounting for two people.

Another example would be one person creates a project but another person finishes that project. Two people can have different opinions of crew size for a project. It is not always as simple as taking total project hours and divide by men.

grichards · 12-30-2009, 08:47 PM

Originally Posted by ekalpakoff

...I fail to see why something that could be utilized to better cost estimate or catch an "i got ya" in a project would be an "excessive feature"?

adding features is a sure way to create another set of gotchas if the feature is not implemented carefully. If there is some method for accomplishing the same end without implementing new features then it saves the user's and the developers the hassle of figuring out the new set of gotchas and working around or preventing. given that SI5 already has it's fair set of "gotchas" i would prefer they focus on solid software and stop the bleeding from all the "feature creep".

aside from that, maybe im not completely understanding the issue.

To reiterate: you wanted a method to identify the number of technicians it would take to install any particular item. the idea being that if it takes 4 hours to install an item with 2 techs you want 8 hours accounted for. And you want someone to know that some portion of the job is going to require more than 1 tech.

rather than put 8 hours as the labor time for the item you want to put 4 hours for the labor time and indicate 2 techs (or 3 or whatever) in a variable (lets call it "crew count").

rather than put the items in a phase that indicates it requires multiple techs to accomplish the phase, you want the "crew count" to isolate these items somehow.

David_Haddad · 12-31-2009, 01:14 AM

Originally Posted by grichards

rather than put the items in a phase that indicates it requires multiple techs to accomplish the phase, you want the "crew count" to isolate these items somehow.

That's a good point. He could use phases right now to accomplish this. I'm not saying that's an ideal solution, but it would work.