Measuring Utilization - Utilization Report

The Utilization report is about whole resources. This makes it possible to understand resource utilization across your entire organization. For example if your resources are over/under allocated or the type/number of hours worked.

The Utilization report computes utilization based on a range of engagement types and enables comparison of utilization rates in the same report. All utilization computations use the same denominator, as determined by the RDC basis and the utilization calculation method. They vary in terms of the numerator. There are a large number of predefined utilization metrics available, however most can be divided into the following broad categories. A more detailed chart can be found at the bottom of this article.

Hours

The actual number of hours devoted to a utilization category, such as hours worked, billable hours worked or available hours to work.

Percent

A percentage of a resource's utilization based on how your installation is set to measure RDC. See Measuring Utilization to read about Projector's RDC settings and how they affect utilization measurements.

Full Time Equivalent (FTE)

The most precise way to compare resource supply and demand is to use hours, as hours always represent the same amount of time. However, a user may prefer to think in terms of people, not hours. Therefore Projector enables reporting based on FTEs (full-time equivalents). The formula used is

• (Hours / FTE-Hours) = FTE.
• FTE-Hours are the difference between the resource's location's normal working hours and the holiday hours. For example:
  • If a resource is scheduled to work 32 hours in a week that has no holidays then the demand for that resource is 0.8 FTEs, and the supply is 1 FTE.
  • If a resource is scheduled to work 32 hours in a week that has one 8-hours holiday then the demand and supply are both 1 FTE.

Whenever resource demand is specified in Projector there is always a resource location specified, so the number of hours in an FTE is never ambiguous.

Vacation hours are not considered in the computation of FTEs because resources in the same location will have different vacation schedules, which would make it difficult to compare supply and demand using FTEs.

Subtracting holidays is somewhat problematic when resourcing from locations with different holiday schedules, but that is the nature of using the FTE metric.

The computation of an FTE is dependent on the Major and Minor timescale set on the column fields tab of the utilization report. For example, if you report supply and demand by week then 1 FTE is 1 resource working all FTE hours that week – one person-week. If you run a report for an entire year and break the report into monthly time buckets then a person who is available to work all year will appear as 1 FTE each month, and 12 FTEs (12 person-months) for the entire year.

Headcount

A headcount of one is calculated for each resource available to work in the specified time period. Therefore a resource that is active for only one day carries the same headcount as a resource that is active an entire month. If you want to understand capacity at a more granular level then it makes more sense to use an hours or FTE utilization report.

The headcount is calculated in a similar way as FTE's. If you run a report for an entire year and break the report into monthly time buckets then a person who is available to work all year will appear as a headcount of 1 each month, and a headcount of 12 for the entire year.

When reporting below the resource level (e.g., title, cost center, location) then headcount is 1 for each unique record at that level. For example, assume that the report includes both resource display name and resource title. Fred was promoted from a Consultant to a Senior Consultant in the middle of a reporting time bucket. The report will have one row for Fred as a Consultant and one row for Fred as a Senior Consultant. The headcount will be 1 for each row. This treatment allows you to count the number of Consultants and the number of Senior Consultants. But if you want to count only the number of resources then you must run the report without including the resource title.

Utilization Report Data Fields