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 actually staff it. Loading resources — the crews, trades, and equipment that do the work — unlocks cost, utilization, and the checks that keep the plan achievable. Owl can generate 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 (project manager). Each resource carries a rate and a type, and gets assigned to the tasks it works on. Once resources are assigned, Owl can roll up cost and show utilization over time.

Step 1 — Get resources into the project

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

  • Have Owl generate them from the schedule and your documents. Owl reads the scope and the tasks and proposes the trades and roles the project needs — in this example it built out a full labor list (pipefitters, a lead mechanical engineer, electrical and controls trades, inspectors, and so on).
  • Upload an existing list — a resource or rate spreadsheet your team already maintains.
  • Add them by hand for a small project or a one-off.
Ask Owl
Generate the labor and equipment resources this project needs from the schedule and the spec, with typical rates.
I'm attaching our rate sheet — load these as the project's resources.

Step 2 — Give each resource a rate and a type

Open a resource to set what it costs and what it is.

A resource detail: type, hourly rate, a utilization summary, and its task assignments with allocation percentages.12341Type — labor, equipment, or material. This one is a Labor resource.2Rate — what an hour costs ($155/hour), so Owl can total the budget.3Utilization summary — 91% avg across 103 tasks, 2,506 hours, an est. $388,430.4The allocation column — color-coded bars: a task drawing the resource at 100% shows red, a lighter load green.

The resource above — Lead Mechanical Engineer — is a Labor resource at $155/hour. The detail carries:

  • Type — labor, equipment, or a material.
  • Rate and cost account — what an hour (or unit) costs, so Owl can total budget.
  • A utilization summary — here 91% average across 103 tasks, 2,506 hours, an estimated $388,430. This is the resource's whole footprint on the project at a glance.

Step 3 — Assign resources to the work

Resources only matter once they're attached to tasks. Owl assigns them across the schedule for you, or you assign them yourself; each assignment records how much of the resource a task uses.

The Task Assignments table (on the resource detail) lists every task the resource works, with a planned and actual amount and an allocation percentage. The allocation bar is color-coded — a task drawing the resource at 100% shows red, a lighter load shows green — so over-committed work is visible immediately.

Ask Owl
Assign the mechanical trades across the construction phase based on each task's scope.
Put the crane on every lift task and flag anywhere it's booked over 100%.

What to do next

  • Keep the plan staffable — Keep resource use realistic covers the utilization view and the guardrail that stops wild hiring swings, so the schedule stays achievable.
  • See the cost — with rates and assignments in place, resource cost rolls up into the project budget and feeds cost dashboards and EVM. Build a view with custom dashboards.