In February four jobs at a controls integrator head for factory tests together, because every customer wants equipment capitalised before the financial year closes. Engineers work Sundays, the panel shop runs late, and one FAT is held with a half-tested sequence. By late April the magnet board is nearly empty. Two customers have delayed site readiness, a third has not released the purchase order. Engineers spend afternoons tidying folders. One of them resigns in May and says he felt surplus.
That swing between overload and idleness is built into project work, and no firm removes it entirely. What it can do is see the swing coming, soften the peaks and use the troughs for work that pays back later.
How the swing shows up on timesheets and on faces
- Booked hours per engineer double in the weeks before factory tests, then drop to almost nothing.
- Comp-off balances pile up in the rush and are never taken, or are all taken in the same quiet month.
- Seniors are spread across three jobs at once while juniors are left to fend for themselves.
- Panel shop wiremen wait for drawings during the crunch, then wait for orders afterwards.
- In quiet weeks people stop filling timesheets because there is nothing to code the hours to.
- Recruiter calls and leave requests both rise in the lull.
What both ends of the swing cost
At the peak, tired engineers make errors that surface at site: an untested interlock, a mislabelled tag, a missing alarm. Rework at a customer's plant costs far more than an extra day in your own shop. Customers who see a scrambled FAT remember it when the next enquiry comes.
In the trough, salaries are paid with nothing billed against them, which is expected. The hidden cost is morale. An engineer with no booked work for weeks reads it as a message about their value. That is when a competitor's message lands. Then the next rush arrives, the firm hires in a panic and puts new people straight onto live jobs.
Why the swing keeps repeating
Most integrators depend on a few anchor customers whose capital budgets follow the same calendar. Customer dates also move for reasons outside your control, such as late civil work or a delayed machine from another vendor. Sales teams quote delivery dates without checking who will be free. There is often no shared view of who is booked on what, only the project heads' memories. And bench time feels like a failure, so nobody plans for it.
A common trap is the order that is won but not released. A letter of intent arrives, the team is pencilled in, and then the customer's civil foundation is late, cable trays are not laid or the motor control centre is not energised. Engineers held back for that job sit waiting. Meanwhile a smaller enquiry that could have filled the gap was quoted for a date nobody could meet.
Check the last year before changing anything
Take twelve months of timesheets for the delivery team. Plot booked hours per week as a simple line, then mark each FAT, SAT and purchase order date on it. Add leave, overtime and any resignations. Most owners see the pattern for the first time: peaks that line up with the customer's year-end, troughs that follow, and exits clustered in the troughs.
Seven ways to flatten the swing
- 1
Keep one loading board for every job
A sheet or board showing each engineer by week for the next quarter, with confirmed work in one colour and likely work in another. Review it weekly with the project heads.
- 2
Check loading before any quotation goes out
The delivery head confirms who could do the work in the quoted window. If nobody is free, the date changes or the owner decides consciously to stretch.
- 3
Maintain a bench backlog
A standing list of useful internal work: a standard function block library, HMI templates, a demo rig for pre-sales, retrofit surveys at old customers, spares lists and archive tidying.
- 4
Plan learning into the troughs
Schedule platform training, simulator practice and junior reviews in the weeks the board shows as light, not as an afterthought.
- 5
Lend people across teams
A SCADA engineer can help with HMI screens on a robot cell; a panel wireman can help a machine build. Agree the rules for lending once, so it is not negotiated each time.
- 6
Record bench hours honestly
Give bench work its own codes on the timesheet, so idle time is visible and nobody feels judged for it.
- 7
Hire for the base load, not the peak
Size the permanent team to the steady workload and plan the peaks with overtime limits, earlier starts and shifted dates.
Reporting utilisation to the owner
A monthly page with booked hours, bench hours and overtime for each team is enough. Show it beside the order book for the next quarter, so the owner sees the trough before it arrives. GullyHR's people reporting service builds this view from timesheets you already keep. Our list of six monthly figures for controls and robotics owners places utilisation beside the others worth watching.
For firms planning headcount across several teams, the headcount planning guide for controls firms explains how a loading view feeds a hiring plan. The wider set of patterns in this trade sits on the automation and robotics sector page.
