Project Staffing Margin Optimizer: Who Works on What

Who should work on which project to earn the most margin?

List your people with what they cost an hour, the hours they have and their skills, then your projects with what you bill an hour, the hours to staff and the skill each needs. The tool returns the split of hours that earns the most, who is the bottleneck, and which work is not worth taking.

Arithmetic on figures you type. Not business, legal or employment advice. The example people and projects are placeholders, not any business's.

Settings

Minimum margin to accept a pairing (%)

A person is only put on a project if the bill rate clears their cost by at least this share of the bill rate. 0 allows anything that makes money.

Extra hours to test (for the value of one more hour)

Each person is given this many more hours in turn and the gain is divided back to a figure per hour.

People (up to 20)

Cost per hour is what an hour of this person really costs you: pay plus the burden, or the contractor rate. Hours is what they can bill over the period you are planning. Skills are separated by commas.

#	Name	Cost / hour	Hours available	Skills
1
2
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20

Projects (up to 20)

Bill rate is what the client pays per hour of this work. A project that needs two kinds of person can be listed twice, once per skill. Anyone with a matching skill can be put on it; a project may list several skills separated by commas and any one will do.

#	Project	Bill rate / hour	Hours to staff	Skill needed
1
2
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5
6
7
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20

Needs at least one person and one project with every field filled in.

Questions teams ask

How do I decide which consultant or freelancer works on which client project?

List each person with their loaded cost per hour, the hours they have free and their skills, and each project with its bill rate, hours to staff and the skill it needs. The tool finds the split of hours that earns the most total margin. It is exact, not a rule of thumb: no other split of the same hours earns more.

Why not just give each project to the cheapest qualified person?

Because people are shared. The cheapest person is often the only one who can do two different projects, and every hour they spend on the lower-paying one is an hour not spent on the higher-paying one. The tool weighs all of the projects against all of the people at once.

What does the value of one more hour mean?

For each person it is the extra margin a further hour of their time would earn right now. A high figure on someone who is fully booked is the clearest sign you are turning away money, and a case for overtime, a contractor or a hire. Zero means they already have spare hours.

Is this business advice?

No. It is arithmetic on the rates and hours you type. Holidays, learning curves, client preferences, continuity on a project and how people feel about their work are yours to weigh, which is why you can read the plan and change the inputs.

Not decided

Whether to hire or subcontract, whether to drop a client, holidays and ramp-up time, how much continuity on a project is worth, learning a new skill, how work is split between a lead and a junior on one project, and how each person feels about it. The plan is a starting point to argue with.

Related tools: the shift cover optimizer and the crew dispatch optimizer.