Compare required project hours with the productive capacity available from a contractor team. Account for billable hours and utilization, then convert any shortage into additional contractor equivalents and any surplus into spare weekly hours.
A positive surplus indicates spare productive hours. A gap shows the weekly shortfall, and the additional headcount rounds up to enough whole contractors to cover it.
Utilization should exclude administration, coordination, and other time that cannot be applied to the required workload.
A requirement of 4,800 hours per week and 28 contractors providing 32 hours at 85% utilization yields 761.6 productive hours. The 4,038.4-hour gap requires about 149 additional contractors.
The calculation rounds up because a fraction of a contractor cannot fully cover the remaining weekly requirement under the same assumptions.
Yes. The full required workload then appears as a capacity gap and is converted into needed contractor equivalents.
A zero utilization rate provides no productive hours and cannot be used to calculate the contractors needed.
The current productive capacity is shown as surplus and coverage is reported as 100% for the zero-demand scenario.
Only when it is reliably available and permitted by the contract; otherwise model overtime as a separate scenario.
| Capacity term | Calculation |
|---|---|
| Gross hours | Contractors × available hours |
| Productive capacity | Gross hours × utilization |
| Coverage | Capacity ÷ required hours |