Work and labour consumption

Success Problem

What is the difference between work and labour consumption?

Impact

The work is physical and mental effort of the individual or of the project team, spent in an unbroken time period for creating some project deliverable. Labour consumption is the human work amount, needed to create one mea-surement unit of some project deliverable.

Recommendation

The work in the work breakdown structure is a contract or work package structured into activities and work steps. The spent work amount is measured as the product of activity duration and number of workers. The unit of measure is then e.g. a man-day, man-month etc. The amount of work needed to reach some goal depends on three factor groups: 1) geneal competencies, professional knowledge and professional skills of the workers, 2) the methods and tools, the work organization and the resources, 3) the work environment. Labour consumption is measured in mandays or in money units (labour cost etc.).

Category

• Resource