Can you recruit technicians for us?

We are not a staffing agency. We build the plan that says who you need, when and at what cost, and we help with job descriptions, pay bands and where to advertise. The hiring decision stays with you.

How far ahead should we plan?

At least two seasons. For heating-heavy firms that means planning in spring for the autumn rush; for firms with summer cooling or construction peaks, planning in winter.

Should we take on more apprentices?

Often yes, but only if you have the journeypersons and supervision to support them and the work to keep them productive. The plan shows whether you do. Apprenticeship rules are set by each province's training authority, so check yours.

What if our work is too unpredictable to plan?

Emergency service is unpredictable call by call, but very predictable month by month. A year or two of your own dispatch history is usually enough to build a reliable pattern.

Capacity and Hiring Plans for Mechanical Contractors

Capacity planning means converting your signed and likely work into field hours, comparing it with the productive hours your crews can actually deliver, and acting on the gap months in advance. Most mechanical firms either turn down work in their peak or carry idle wages in their trough. Both cost money, and both are usually visible on a simple spreadsheet long before they happen.

The backlog in crew-weeks

Revenue backlog in dollars is a sales number. Backlog in crew-weeks is an operating number, and it is the one that tells you when to hire.

Take a firm with eight installers. Each is paid for 40 hours, but after travel, shop time and callbacks about 32 hours a week land on jobs, so the crew delivers 256 productive hours a week. Signed work plus the jobs you are confident of winning adds up to 4,200 field hours. That is 16.4 weeks of backlog.

Now add the season. If your heating replacement and service peak starts in October and it takes you, say, ten weeks to find and onboard a journeyperson, then a shortfall that shows up in the October forecast needs a hiring decision in July. Most owners make it in October, when every other shop in town is also short.

A firm that sees this in July can choose between hiring, booking subcontract crews or pacing sales. A firm that sees it in October can only choose between overtime and disappointed customers.

Who it is for

Firms that turned away work last peak season and do not want to again
Firms with idle crews in shoulder months that keep paying them anyway
Commercial contractors deciding how many bids they can afford to win at once
Owners growing from one crew lead to several, who need a structure that scales

What is included

Capacity model. Productive hours by trade and role (journeyperson, apprentice, helper, service technician), built from your payroll and job data.
Demand model. Signed backlog, weighted pipeline and seasonal service history, month by month for 26 weeks.
Gap report. Where you are short or long, by trade, with the cost of each option: overtime, subcontracting, hiring, or declining work.
Hiring calendar. When to post, interview and onboard, and pay bands that are consistent across the team.
Apprentice plan. How many apprentices your journeypersons can support productively, with progression milestones. Trade standards come from your province's apprenticeship authority and, for designated trades, the Red Seal Program.
Utilisation tracking. A weekly billable-hours report by technician so the model stays honest.

Timeline

The first model takes three to five weeks: data gathering, a draft, and a working session to test it against your judgment. From then on it is a monthly update. Many owners keep us on a small retainer to run that review with them until the habit sticks.

How we measure results

We track billable efficiency (billable hours divided by paid hours) by crew, overtime as a share of payroll, the number of jobs declined or delayed for lack of crew, and backlog in crew-weeks at each month end. Over a full season you should see fewer emergency hires, less unplanned overtime and fewer idle weeks. Utilisation feeds straight into your selling rate, so an improvement here lowers your cost per billable hour.

Mistakes to avoid

Planning in dollars only. A $300,000 job with heavy prefab and a $300,000 job with heavy field labour use very different crew time.
Assuming 40 billable hours. Nobody bills every paid hour. Use your real efficiency.
Hiring for this month. Hire for the month the person becomes productive.
Ignoring the owner's own hours. If the owner still runs a truck two days a week, that capacity disappears the day they stop. Our owner time service plans for that.
Winning every bid. A strong close rate is a problem if it overloads crews and drags margins. The bid/no-bid scorecard helps you choose.

See the services overview for how capacity work fits with pricing and job costing.

Capacity and hiring plans that run ahead of your season