Cheapest crew per site, or cheapest week?
Travel is paid, the wharf has a one-way access lane, and the town-center job cannot start before seven, so the same gang costs $13,000 on one site and $19,600 on another. Filling the sites one at a time with the cheapest free crew costs $2,800 more than it needs to.
Construction Starter Optimization free
After you install, this is the model to open.
Which Crew Goes to Which Site?
- In your spreadsheet, click the Sortia icon in the strip of icons down the right-hand edge. No strip? Click the arrow at the bottom-right to open it. You can also use Extensions, then Sortia, then Open Sortia.
- Click Start from a template and put that name in the search box.
- Pick the card with that name and click Load this template. It arrives on a new tab with real numbers already in it.
The answer
The same four sites covered two ways:
- Cheapest-first plan
- $61,200 for the week
- Optimized plan
- $58,400 for the week
- Saving
- $2,800 nobody travels further
- Where it comes from
- one swap
The difference is a single decision that looks wrong on its own. Sending Ollie to Beech Road is right in isolation, but Ollie is also the only crew that reaches Northgate cheaply, so booking him early leaves Northgate at $19,600. The optimizer puts Danny on Beech Road instead, pays $1,600 more there and gets $4,400 back at Northgate. Cheapest-first is a rule about one site; the optimizer is looking at the week. Hold a crew at zero and rerun to price a crew being off, which is usually more than a week of their rate.
The model
A four by four cost grid for the week, including travel and access, and a matching grid of send-or-not decisions. Every site gets one crew and every crew gets one site.
| Crews / sites | 4 / 4 |
| Cost for the week | $13,000 to $21,000 a pairing |
| Rule | one crew per site, one site per crew |
| Opening plan | cheapest free crew, site by site |
| Total cost for the week | solved |
Once it is in your sheet
- The model arrives with real numbers in it and runs as it stands, so you can press the button first and understand it second.
- Change the numbers to yours. The sheet marks which cells are inputs and which hold formulas, and most labels carry a note explaining the row.
- Press the run button at the bottom of the panel. It is labeled for the tool you are in, and the result lands on its own tab, with a written reading of it beside the figures.
Never used Google Sheets? Start here goes the whole way, in seven steps, and assumes nothing.
Next question
- The rate says 90 a day. What do the site records say?What Does a Normal Crew Day Produce?
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- Crew B is 16% ahead. Is that the crew, or the fortnight?Do the Three Crews Work at the Same Rate?
- Should you chase this tender at all?How Should Two Bidders Price One Tender?
- Was your best day on site really your best?Which Days on Site Went Wrong?
- Is your markup quietly costing you margin?What Markup Gets This Bid to Target Margin?
Every model like this one, and the method behind them: Optimization in Google Sheets.