How Do I Find My Own Production Rates?

Do that for every job, and average it out.

The more data you have, the more solid average you have, the more accurate your next estimate will be.

You can even get fancy and create multiple production rates by segmenting jobs that had difficult access, vs easy access, and getting a production rate for each.

The idea is though, find the data!

Don’t just go by your gut.

I can tell you countless stories of contractors that got a real wakeup call when they went hunting for their own production rates.

For example – one common scenario is they estimated the labor on the job as though they themselves were on the job every hour of the day.

When they went looking for the data on how long it actually took the crew that did the job, they got a reality check and discovered that their crew was not as experienced as the owner was, and it was taking 20% longer on average than what the owner or salesperson was accustomed to estimating.

The solution?

Don’t take it out on your crew, rather, start estimating in line with reality, according to the skill level of the crew doing the job.

Then focus on training them and teaching how to manage job site logistics for maximum efficiency.

Once their track record improves, and their production rates start beating your estimates consistently, then and only then do you have the breathing room to bring your production rate back to where you had it.

In my examples and scenarios so far, I’ve mostly been focusing on production rates for labor, but you can build a production rate for any labor or material usage in many different types of work.

For instance, take the same model above, and figure out your production rate for aggregate for the base rock under the pavers.

And the joint sand.

And the edge restraint.

You get the idea.

What are the limits of production rates?

Well, there are some types of work that production rates don’t really work well on.

For instance, say you build a 11×16 koi pond in 50 man-hours.

Now you want to build a 16×21 koi pond, you may think that you can just take the square footage surface area of the pond you built previously and turn it into a production rate for the bigger pond.

It’s tough, doesn’t work well.

I’m speaking from experience.

What I found worked better for something like koi ponds was come up with a “menu” of pond sizes, sell and install those, and track your hours so you can figure out the man-hours it takes to install each size.

Then just use that quantity of man-hours each time you create an estimate for a koi pond of that size.

At the end of the day, I’m a fan of K.I.S.S. – Keep It Simple Stupid

It’s easy to over correct and over analyze this stuff.

Don’t get sucked into analysis paralysis.

I only want the data that will help me make a better decision tomorrow.

Everything else is white noise.

So, keep it simple, exercise discipline, track your hours and material usage, and then take that data and find your production rates so you can speed up your estimating process, while being more accurate and in line with reality.

I made a quick spreadsheet you can use to find your own production rates right here, grab it and enjoy finding the answers to your own production rates!

Cheers!

Weston Zimmerman

SynkedUP founder and CEO