Explore the difference between man hours and crew hours, and how these measurements play into labor productivity and cost. This resource provides a comprehensive look at these terms, breaking down the role of various labor entities and how their input contributes to the larger operation.
Key Insights
- Man hour refers to one hour of labor, measured by productivity or cost. This measurement belongs to a resource, which can include diverse labor and equipment entities such as a journeyman, foreman, laborer, or equipment operator.
- A crew hour encompasses multiple resources for one hour and the productivity they collectively provide. This concept is often used in larger scale operations, like installing asphalt on a city street, where a multitude of different labor entities are required to complete the task within a set period of time.
- Understanding the difference between man hours and crew hours is essential in labor management, productivity calculation, and cost estimation. If a crew can complete a certain amount of work in a crew hour, this measurement can be applied to estimate the time and resources needed for larger projects.
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Let's talk a little bit about labor. So here we have man hour, which is one hour of labor in reference to an hour of productivity or cost. That's for one person to spend an hour's worth of time based on how much they get done.
Now that man hour belongs to a resource. So a resource refers to various labor and equipment entities, such as a journeyman, foreman, labor, and so on, even the operators of equipment. Anything that's required to account for one man hour worth of labor.
So a man hour could be an apprentice, it could be a journeyman, or so on. Those are considered to be the resources. So a resource of a journeyman, resource of a laborer are still calculated at this point as a individual man hour or even a man day for that matter.
Now when we get into crews, a crew is multiple different resources where you may have a journeyman, a foreman, equipment operator, and so on, and they're all measured by how many hours per day they actually put in under man hours. So man hours leads to the resources and crews utilize the resources and man hours. That brings us into a crew hour.
So what's the difference between a crew hour and a man hour? A man hour again is one person for one hour and the productivity that they provide. So a crew hour would be a multitude of potential resources for one hour plus how much work they get done. A quick example of that might be if you watch them installing asphalt on a city street.
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It takes about six or eight men for that entire process. You have equipment, you have equipment operators, you have laborers that are spreading the material, you have a superintendent that's making sure everything works out just fine. They're all factored at different labor rates.
They're all required to get the same amount of work done within an eight-hour period of time. Take away one of those resources and chances are you will not be able to do it. So they have to be combined together and that is considered a crew hour.
So therefore, if you can get 500 feet done within a crew hour with each of those men, then you would apply it for the rest of the project. How many crew hours is it going to take to get 10,000 feet up? In our next video, we're going to talk about abbreviations.
