Set a Billable Utilization Target That Counts Onboarding

Keep Billing and Delivery Time Separate

Billable utilization measures the work counted as billable against the available-hour basis you define. Productive utilization can include agreed delivery work for which the client isn't charged. State the numerator and denominator before comparing either result with a target.

The model uses 85% for a dedicated project engineer without escalation duty. It assigns onboarding to that engineer and assumes 60 hours per new managed client. The onboarding fee is quoted and then waived for the signed agreement. The labor still needs scheduling and paying.

Don't ask the engineer to log onboarding as billed work so the report looks right. Don't hide it as unexplained internal time either. Give it a clear work category and include it in the delivery-capacity view.

Keep the terms plain on the report: billed project work, unpaid onboarding, other assigned work, and available hours. Finance and the project owner should agree how each category is used. The engineer should be able to follow the calculation from their own records.

Use the Model Example on the Same Time Basis

For a hypothetical plan using the US stable example, divide its $290,769 annual project revenue by the $185 blended hourly rate and then by the months in the year: about 131.0 billed hours a month. Its onboarding calculation is annual sales and marketing spending of $218,077 divided by the $25,000 acquisition cost, multiplied by 60 onboarding hours and divided by the months in the year: about 43.6 hours a month. Add the calculated workloads to find the productive delivery capacity needed.

Divide that combined monthly workload by the model's 117.58 productive hours per project engineer each month. The result is about 1.48 full-time equivalents of project work. Billed work alone is about 1.11 FTE. The remaining 0.37 FTE is the onboarding the company chose to include free.

Those are staffing amounts across the work, not instructions to hire a fraction of a person or give every engineer the same invoice target. Put the actual assignments on named calendars. Check that the people and skills are available when each task must happen.

For the hypothetical growth comparison, hold project revenue and rate unchanged, so the calculated billed work stays about 131.0 hours a month. Replace annual sales and marketing spending with the growth model's $363,462 in the same onboarding calculation: about 72.7 hours a month. Add those workloads and divide by monthly productive capacity for a combined need of about 1.73 project FTE. A billing-only view would omit the additional onboarding load.

Agree the Engineer’s Work Before Reviewing the Result

Give the engineer an assignment record that shows the project, remaining work estimate, intended outcome, and agreed dates. Mark onboarding separately. Record other duties that take capacity away from the dedicated project role.

If the engineer covers service escalations, put that work on the record. Don't allocate their full productive project month and then treat support interruptions as spare-time work. Check the effect with the service lead before changing the project commitment.

Erick Simpson recommends training named people to carry out a documented onboarding process instead of assigning whoever happens to be available. He says those can be existing staff with explicit work tickets and onboarding priority. That's his resource-assignment advice, and it fits the need for a visible assignment before reviewing performance.

Have the project owner settle priority clashes. An engineer shouldn't have to choose between an onboarding instruction and a sold project deadline while both managers assume their own task comes first.

Review the Difference Before Blaming the Percentage

Start with actual labor and the work completed. Compare each assignment with its remaining estimate. Where the result differs, inspect what changed: scope, access, client decisions, preparation, rework, or the method used.

A low billed-hours result can coexist with a full onboarding schedule. It can also reflect a gap in assigned work or inaccurate recording. Find which applies. The percentage alone doesn't identify the cause.

On a podcast, Simpson recommends reviewing non-billable time by category before treating an apparent technician shortage as a need to hire. His examples include meetings, travel, rework, and administration. Keep those categories visible, then decide which work needs changing or another kind of support.

Don't automatically count every non-billable entry as productive delivery. Check what the person actually did and how the reporting definition treats it. The aim is an honest record, including work that needs to be reduced or reassigned.

Give Quality and Handover Their Own Check

Use the agreed task result alongside the labor record. Check that the work functions within the agreed scope, the documentation is usable, and the receiving team has accepted the handover. A busy calendar doesn't establish that those results were achieved.

For onboarding, define the point where the ordinary service team takes responsibility. Record unresolved items, who owns them, and the client decisions still required. Closing the project shouldn't erase the work left behind.

If a task needs more help, name the help and schedule it. If the estimate missed known work, fix the estimating process. If new scope appeared, take it through the change decision. Use the review to change the work, rather than only changing the label on the engineer's score.

Keep the Cost With the Work

The model's US project engineer salary is $84,000. Its general 1.25 burden multiplier brings that to $105,000 annually. That pay doesn't fall because onboarding was waived. Keep the cost of those hours in the project delivery plan.

The model places onboarding labor on project engineers, not in the support desk's slack. Don't move the work into the desk report to make project utilization or margin look better. The company still needs to fund the people delivering it.

Use actual pay, actual work, and the same reporting period when testing your own result. Keep the billing decision with the authorized commercial owner. The engineer records the labor that happened.

Use a Review Checklist With Named Owners

• The project owner confirms the assigned project and onboarding work, estimates, priorities, and required handovers.
• The engineer records actual labor under the correct work category and raises a blocked task or growing estimate.
• The service lead records any support escalation duty and agrees its effect on project availability.
• Finance checks the available-hour basis, cost treatment, and the separate billed and productive results.
• The project owner reviews quality and handover evidence, then assigns any training, process, or scope change.

Take the engineer's current assignments and split billed project work from unpaid onboarding. Put both beside the available capacity. If the billing target assumes those onboarding hours don't exist, change the target and the staffing plan before the next performance review.