Find the double-booked operator before Monday, not on site
Onplana shows each person's weekly hours against everything they are already committed to, across every programme rather than one, so an over-allocation surfaces before the week starts instead of when two superintendents both turn up expecting the same crew.
What changes about Monday morning
The spreadsheet next to the programme
- Reconcile the crew availability sheet against the programme by hand, every week.
- Ring round the foremen to find out who is actually free.
- Type the holiday board into the availability sheet a second time.
- Find the double-booking when both jobs plan for the same operator.
- Re-key last week's timesheets to work out what the week really cost.
One view instead
- Weekly hours sit beside committed allocation, across every job.
- Booked time off comes out of available hours on its own.
- The clash shows before the week, with the person and the week named.
- Forecast mode reads forward weeks, not just the one in front of you.
- Logged hours feed the same view, so next week plans against what happened.
How it works
Step 1
Set what each person can actually give you
Weekly hours per person, next to everything they are already committed to across every job rather than just this one. Booked time off comes out of available hours, so a week somebody is away reads as zero rather than as forty.
Step 2
Flatten the clash inside the programme
The leveller reads the schedule you already have and proposes moves that fit the links already in it. Critical and high-priority work is pinned in place rather than shuffled, so the sequence you committed to survives the flattening.
Step 3
Check the plan against the hours actually worked
Logged hours feed the same utilisation view the plan is built on, through an approval chain you configure. Next week is planned against what happened on site, not against what last week assumed would happen.
Proof, on your programme
We would rather you did not take our word for the over-allocation number. Two free tools run against the file you already have and report what they find, before you create an account or change anything.
The Resource Allocation Heatmap reads your .mpp or XML and computes per-person weekly utilisation, with the ten worst hotspots and the tasks behind them. The Resource Leveling Tool goes further: it flags every week somebody is over-allocated and proposes a re-sequenced plan that flattens the conflicts, pinning critical and high-priority tasks in place, and exports the result as Microsoft Project XML so you can take it back to whatever you use today. Neither needs an account, and neither changes your file.
What it costs, and what it does not do
Per-person capacity, forecast weeks, per-project allocation and timesheets with an approval chain are on the Professional plan, with no seat minimum. It replaces the crew availability spreadsheet that sits next to the programme and never quite agrees with it. Importing the programme itself is on the Free plan, so you can bring the file across and look before you decide anything.
The honest limit
Capacity is organisation-wide, so you will see that one operator is committed on three programmes at once. Levelling is not. It is an analysis of a single schedule, so it proposes moves inside one programme and will not resolve a clash across three for you. On a portfolio of separate jobs that matters: the view tells you which week breaks and who is in the middle of it, and then a human decides which job gives way. If you were expecting the software to arbitrate between two site managers, it does not, and you should know that before you move rather than after.
Questions planners ask first
Does it schedule crews, or only named individuals?
Capacity is held per person, so a crew is the people in it. That is deliberate rather than a gap: a gang of six with one operator out is not the same six hours short in every direction, and a single crew-level number hides which trade is the constraint. If you plan at gang level today, model the gang as its members and the totals still add up.
Does booked time off come out of available hours automatically?
Yes, and there is one thing worth knowing. Booked time off is deducted from available hours by default. If you set an explicit capacity figure for that person and week, your figure wins and the deduction is not applied on top. That is so a planner can say "he is on half days this week" without the system arguing, but it does mean an explicit override is exactly that, an override.
Can it resolve a clash across three separate jobs for me?
No, and this is the honest limit. The capacity view is organisation-wide, so you see that one operator is committed on three programmes at once. The levelling analysis runs against one schedule at a time, so it will propose moves inside a programme but will not decide which of your three jobs gives way. It shows you the clash; the call is yours.
Do I have to rebuild the programme to try this?
No. Import the file you already have. Microsoft Project .mpp, MSPDI XML, .mpx and Primavera P6 .xer all come in, with tasks, links, resources and costs, and import is on the Free plan rather than behind an upgrade.
Which plan is capacity planning on?
Professional. Per-person capacity, the forecast view, per-project allocation and timesheets with an approval chain are all on it, with no seat minimum.
Can I see the over-allocation in my own programme before signing up?
Yes. Upload your .mpp to the free Resource Allocation Heatmap and it reports per-person weekly utilisation and the worst hotspots. The free Resource Leveling Tool goes a step further and proposes the re-sequenced plan, which you can export as Microsoft Project XML. Neither needs an account.
If the question is the programme rather than the people, construction scheduling covers bringing a P6 or Microsoft Project programme across and keeping the baseline. Step 3 above is the other half of this page, and project time tracking covers what the logged hours are worth once they arrive.
See next week before it happens
Bring the programme you already have across and put your crews against it on the Professional plan. The file you have stays exactly as it is.
Start free