Understanding Resource Availability and Rates

You can define multiple availability periods and pay rates for individual resources to reflect realistic variations in a resource's schedule.

An individual resource's availability can vary over time due to factors such as multiple commitments or seasonal availability. You can specify as many periods as necessary to model each resource's availability. For each period, enter an effective start date and the maximum work units the resource can perform within a single work period. For example, a resource available to work a full day may have a Max Units/Time value of 8h/d, or 100%. A resource with limited availability may only be able to work 4h/d, or 50%.

Units/Time values are measured against the time periods in the resource's calendar. For example, if the calendar's Hours/Day setting is 8, and your preferences are set to show unit and duration labels of hours and days, then entering a max unit/time value of 100% would equate to 8h/d, depending on your units/time format preference. Entering 120% would equate to 10h/d. Unit and duration labels, as well as the format for Units/Time, are set in the user preferences. Units/Time values can be entered as a ratio or percentage and will be automatically converted to your format preference. Labor and nonlabor resources use time units, while material resources use their specified unit of measure.

Separate resource availability is defined in each workspace and project where the resource is available. When you assign work availability to a resource at the project level, the resource's project usage is measured against its project availability. When you assign work availability to the same resource at the workspace level, the resource's usage on all projects to which it is assigned rolls up and is measured against its workspace availability. For example, if a resource has varying levels of availability at each level, the resource may be overallocated in Project A, 100% allocated in Project B, but still have availability at the parent workspace level. When entering availability values, consider if the resource may be assigned to activities in other projects at the same time and may need to split their availability.

For each availability period you can specify up to five different rate types. While some resources may have a single standard rate at all times, other resources may have separate standard, internal, and external rates. A resource's rates are used to compute costs for any activities to which the resource is assigned. Depending on the resource type, the rate may be the unit price for labor such as a worker, nonlabor such as equipment, or material such as concrete. Separate resource rates can be defined in each workspace and project where the resource is available. The label for each rate type can be customized in the Resource/Role object settings.