Load your resources

A schedule with durations but no resources tells you when the work happens, not who does it, what it costs, or whether you can staff it. Loading resources (the crews, trades and equipment that do the work) unlocks cost, hours over time, and the checks that keep the plan achievable. Owl can work out the resources from your schedule and documents, or you can bring your own.

Note: A resource is anything the work consumes: a labor trade (pipefitters, a mechanical engineer), a piece of equipment (a crane), or a role (a project manager). Each resource has a type, a rate and a calendar, and is assigned to the activities it works on. Once resources are assigned, Owl rolls up cost and shows hours over time.

Step 1: Get resources into the project

There are three ways to fill the Resources list in the project tree:

  • Have Owl load them. Start a new thread with the + on the chat panel and pick Load resources under Resource specialist. Owl reads the scope and the activities, proposes the trades, roles and equipment the project needs with typical rates, and assigns them across the schedule. Attach a rate sheet or crew list and it uses yours.
  • Ask in any thread, in your own words.
  • Add them by hand: open the Resources sheet and click New resource.
Ask Owl
Load the labor and equipment this project needs from the schedule and the spec, with typical rates for New Jersey.
I'm attaching our rate sheet. Load these as the project's resources.

Step 2: Check them in the Resources sheet

Hover Resources in the project tree and click the grid icon to see every resource as a sheet: its ID, name, type, calendar, hourly rate, currency, cost account, how many activities it's assigned to, and notes. Edit any cell in place, and click New resource to add one.

The Resources sheet, one row per resource, with type, calendar, hourly rate and assignment count. Several resources carry a warning badge.1231Each resource. A warning badge with a number means it fails that many guardrails, such as being booked over 100%.2Resource type and calendar: labor, equipment or material, and the working time it follows.3Hourly rate, for cost roll-ups.

Step 3: Open a resource

Click a resource in the project tree to open its page.

A resource page. Its ID, name, type, cost account and hourly rate on the left, a utilization summary below, and its task assignments on the right.12341ID, name, type, cost account and hourly rate. This one is a Labor resource at $155 an hour.2Utilization: how much of it the activities it works on use, total hours and estimated cost.3Task Assignments: every activity it works on, with budgeted and actual hours and its units per time (8h/d is one person full time).4Assign task puts it on another activity.

The page carries:

  • Type: labor, equipment or material. The crew guardrails check labor resources only.
  • Hourly rate and cost account: what an hour costs, so Owl can total the budget.
  • Utilization: the resource's whole footprint on the project at a glance.
  • Formulas: values you work out for every resource, like its total planned cost. See Introduction to formulas.

Step 4: Assign resources to the work

Resources only matter once they're attached to activities. Owl assigns them for you when it loads them, or you assign them yourself: Assign task on the resource's page, then pick the activity. Each assignment records how much of the resource the activity uses, either way round:

  • Units per time: how many of the resource work while the activity works. 8h/d is one person full time (also shown as 100%), 4h/d half time, 16h/d two people. New assignments start at 8h/d. The budgeted hours are then units per time × the activity's working hours, and follow its duration.
  • Budgeted units: the hours (or quantity) for the whole activity, like 120h. Units per time is then those hours spread over the activity's working hours.

Enter one and the other follows. Changing the activity's duration moves one of them, as its duration type says: a fixed-units activity keeps its hours and the units per time changes; a fixed-units-per-time one keeps its units per time and the hours change.

Ask Owl
Assign the mechanical trades across the construction phase based on each activity's scope.
Put the crane on every lift activity and tell me anywhere it's booked on two at once.

As soon as resources are assigned, the default guardrails start checking them: Crews are booked beyond what they can do flags any labor resource over one full-time unit (8h/d) at once, and Crew sizes swing month to month flags hire-and-fire patterns.

What to do next

  • Keep the plan staffable: Keep resource use realistic covers the hours charts and the guardrails that catch overbooked and swinging crews.
  • See the cost: with rates and assignments in place, resource cost rolls up into the budget and feeds cost dashboards and EVM. Build a view with custom dashboards.