Work Study and Costings

Introduction

Work study is often viewed as a 1970's management tool that was used in a negative way to impose a prescriptive maintenance regime on groundstaff, but also in a positive way as a means of increasing bonus (incentive) payments, sometimes even through playing the system by simply being good at manipulating figures for work carried out - or sometimes not, as the case may be.

This may be a simplified description, but it highlights how some management tools are sometimes viewed.

Used in an effective way that complements the objectives of an organisation then work study can be a useful tool for a manager of a sports facility.

What is Work Study?

British Standards define it as 'The systematic examination of activities in order to improve the effective use of human and other resources'.

There are two main components to work study:

1. Method Study
2. Work Measurement

• Method Study is a problem solving tool and is defined as 'The systematic recording and critical examination of ways of doing things in order to make improvements'; whilst
• Work Measurement is 'The application of techniques designed to establish the time for a qualified worker to carry out a task at a defined rate of working'.

Why is work study of use to both the groundsman and grounds manager in the new millennium?

There are a number of important reasons why work study is of interest to the modern day groundsman and grounds manager. These include:

• With the ever increasing customer demand for quality playing facilities, groundstaff need to aspire to the needs of their customer;
• With improvements in materials and machinery technology, new or alternate ways of carrying out tasks should be considered;
• Local authorities have implemented 'Best Value' and need to continue to look at ways of providing an effective service;
• Quality Standards are being used much more for sports surfaces, and these need to be managed in an effective way to ensure they are provided in accordance with the standard required.

Grounds managers and groundsmen are likely to be undertaking a sort of informal work study some or most of the time.

They will be looking at

• what is the quickest route to mow 18 golf greens to make effective use of the time available;
• what is the most appropriate way to apply top-dressing to the sports surface;
• sequencing work so as to maximise the results achieved from the input;
• sequencing work so as to minimise the inconvenience it has on the customer;
• considering how effective different formulations of fertiliser are for their particular facility;
• the most efficient way to clean a machine, etc.

Part of these activities will already be recorded in diaries and work books to assist in making decisions for later in the year or for planning the following year's work activities.

If we consider that the main objective of method study is 'to assist management in solving its problems so as to make the most efficient and safe use of available resources, including land, buildings, people, equipment, materials' etc., then it is probably quite reasonable to say that most grounds managers and groundsmen undertake an informal and loose form of method study without realising it.

Work measurement is a more precise and smaller management tool and aims to establish the average time needed for various elements of activity, such as mowing a football pitch of a certain size. This will typically be carried out on a less regular basis, as once someone 'knows' how long it takes to mow a football pitch then that figure is usually recorded in a diary or a mental note taken and this is used for building up work programmes and labour profiles.

Method Study

There is a general procedure that is followed for method study and this consists of the following parts:

1. Select - Clarify what the problem is and gather information about it.
2. Record - This is where work measurement mainly applies. Collect data and find out all you can about the activity or situation being investigated.
3. Examine - Scrutinise the data and information. Try and identify what improvements can be made. Offer constructive criticism. Critically examine the activity - see chart below.
4. Develop - Come up with proposals, training programmes, models to evaluate.
5. Install - Introduce the necessary changes. This may be through consultation, but communicate the need for change clearly if a number of people are involved.
6. Maintain - Monitor the changes to ensure improvements are effective.

Questioning approach to critically examine an activity

Ask the following questions to enable a detailed analysis to take place.

Present facts		Alternatives	Selections
WHAT is achieved?	WHY is it necessary?	WHAT else could be done?	WHAT should be done?
WHERE is it done?	WHY there?	WHERE else could it be done?	WHERE should it be done?
WHEN is it done?	WHY then?	WHEN else could it be done?	WHEN should it be done?
WHO does it?	WHY that person?	WHO else could do it?	WHO should do it?
HOW is it done?	WHY that way?	HOW else could it be done?	HOW should it be done?

Summary

The method study process can be simplified into four principal stages:

• DEFINE the problem;
• FIND solutions;
• CHOOSE the most appropriate solution;
• IMPLEMENT the solution.

By following this systematic approach, on a periodic basis, then groundstaff will be able to ensure that they are continually improving and adapting to the changing demands of outdoor sports provision and maintenance.

Work Measurement

To enable a realistic time to be determined for a particular activity then work measurement, or at least a type of it, can be undertaken in the workplace.

This will provide valuable information for both contract and non-contract situations, because if a manager does not know how long the different grounds maintenance tasks take, especially if there is a range of machinery involved, then it is not going to be possible to build up an appropriate maintenance and management plan for any sports pitch or facility.

This will also have an effect on the provision of accurate costings for staff and activity / task costs and would prove disadvantageous to a contractor who could not estimate the length of time to include for tasks when quoting for a job or long term contract.

It is also essential that if quality standards are to be maintained appropriately then accurate times (and costings) for a range of tasks are needed.

An example of the sort of times that should be built up and recorded are included as part of the football labour (workload) profile articles

Without accurate costings how can it be possible to say that a surface or facility is giving value for money? This will be particularly pertinent for 'Best Value' comparisons between local authorities and also for providing a realistic cost of managing facilities when proposals are being submitted for the provision of sports facilities.

Work Measurement Techniques

Different work measurement techniques can be used to determine an appropriate standard time for a qualified worker to carry out a task. It is not the purpose of this article to explore these techniques, just to raise awareness of them. The five main headings for the techniques, with some examples of each, are as follows:

1. Direct observation - which can include time study to manually record activities or activity sampling to determine how much of the overall time is spent on different sub-tasks, as well as periods of inactivity;
2. Synthesis - times based on previous studies and data (termed synthetic data) or PMTS - Predetermined motion time systems - which looks at activity patterns;
3. Estimating techniques - which can range from quite subjective assessment to a detailed analytical estimate;
4. Self-recording methods - this can be through diary records, which hopefully most groundstaff keep;
5. Statistical methods - different types can be used including analysis of variance, regression analysis and is a useful method where the work to be measured can be quite variable.

Following careful observation and application of the work measurement techniques a 'standard time' is arrived at for a particular activity over a given area.

A typical standard time will be composed of a number of elements, including the:

• Basic (or observed) time to carry out the work;
• Relaxation time - to recover from fatigue and environmental conditions under which the work was undertaken: this can vary quite considerably from negligible to significant; health and safety considerations must be taken into account, for example the length of time continually using a computer screen (VDU); personal needs (e.g. toilet requirements) should also be considered.
• Contingency time - small items of work, such as unclogging a front roller of a mower of wet grass clippings and earthworm casts;
• Unoccupied time - where no productive work is achieved;
• Interference time - which may be waiting for another task prior to completing the current task in hand. Waiting for golfers to putt out on a green may also be considered an example of interference time as work has to stop periodically, well usually, when working in the immediate vicinity.

Once these have all been considered then a 'standard time' for an activity is arrived at. This is then used to build up an overall picture of how long it takes, for example, to maintain a sports facility.

Unit Costings

Following on from the work estimation techniques and studies is the need to provide a realistic estimate of the cost to maintain a facility.

It is not simply a matter of multiplying the total time, in hours, spent on a facility by the hourly rate of staff, because the hourly rate has to be quite clearly quantified in the first place.

For example, how are holidays etc. to be accounted for when setting the overall hourly rate that is applied to a facility?

Productive Hours

What needs to take place in the first instance is to estimate the number of productive hours that are available for a member of staff, as follows:

• Annual holidays: 25 days;
• Bank and Public holidays: 8 days;
• Training: 2 days;
• Sickness: 5? days; (this can be notoriously difficult to estimate)

There are 40 days to be taken away from 260 days (52 weeks x 5 days), which leaves 220 days available for actual work.

If sickness was a problem then this would have to be reviewed and costings adjusted accordingly.

Salary

If we take the Institute of Groundsmanship's Salary recommendations for 2004, a Skilled Groundsman's basic salary should be £15360 - £18770 (for a 37.5 hour week), then the midrange figure is £17,065.

Not all of the 7½-hours in the day will actually be productive ones. Allowance will have to be made for record keeping, walking to buildings, travelling between sites, travelling within a site, meetings or briefings, cleaning tools and machinery if not already accounted for within any of the standard times for activities, morning and afternoon tea break etc.

The actual amount of unproductive time will depend upon circumstances, however, for this exercise an estimated 1½ hours (20% of the total available hour) will be classed as unproductive. This therefore leaves 6 hours per day as being of a productive nature.

Total productive hours per year (estimated):220 days x 6 hours = 1,320 hours.

The basic cost per productive hour is therefore £17,065 ÷ 1,320 = £ 12.93 per hour.

This means that if this particular member of staff undertook 1,320 hours of productive work then, if the work was carried out on a contract basis, all of the salary would be recovered in charges.

Additional Considerations

What would also need to be added to this figure is:

• the amount of profit element expected, e.g. 20%?;
• an apportionment of back ground administrative / managerial staff that are needed to support the front line staff. These costs may need to be recovered somehow and applying a certain amount to each productive hour will enable the costs to be recovered, or at least accounted for when determining the real cost of providing and maintaining a facility. As a simple example, if we assume that there are 10 front line staff supported by 1 administrative / managerial staff (say on a salary of £25,000), then the additional cost that may go onto each productive hour of charge would be as follows:
  • 1,320 productive hours x 10 staff = 13,200 productive hours. Therefore £1.89 (x 13,200 hours) would need to be added to ensure the administrative / managerial cost is properly accounted for.
  • The new productive hourly rate for a front line staff member would now be £ 14.82, excluding profit element.
• Employer and business costs would also need to be considered.
• The cost of machinery and equipment would also have to be determined and consideration given to how these are going to be costed and accounted for.
• Material costs would probably be identified as a separate cost and could easily be accounted for. A small handling or storage charge may be levied when working out these costs as well. A mark up profit may also be considered.

When all these factors are taken into account, it becomes clear that the effective management of a sports facility and the determination of the real cost of a facility can be quite involved.

References and Further Reading

1. Nicoll, G.H. (1978) 'Work Study - Friend or Foe?', The Journal of the Sports Turf Research Institute, 23-27
2. British Standard BS 3138: 1992 Glossary of terms used in management services
3. British Standard BS 3375-1: 1995 Management services - Part 1: Guide to organization study
4. British Standard BS 3375-2: 1993 Management services - Part 2: Guide to method study
5. British Standard BS 3375-3: 1993 Management services - Part 3: Guide to work measurement
6. British Standard BS 3375-4: 1993 Management services - Part 4: Guide to work performance control
7. (2004) 'IOG Recommended Salary Bands 2004',The Groundsman, January issue, 35