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How jobs, demands, and crew changes work

Planner is built around three ideas that work together: a job, the demands it creates, and the crew changes that keep it staffed. Once these three click into place, the rest of Planner makes sense.

A job is the work​

A job is a piece of work at one facility over a set date range. Every job carries the same core facts:

  • Where and when. The facility the work happens on, and the start and end dates.
  • Who it is for. The customer, and optionally the contractor and the country the work sits in.
  • What kind of work it is. The job type, which groups similar work together.
  • How people get there. Mobilisation and demobilisation (mob and demob, meaning moving personnel to and from the worksite).

Think of a job as the container. On its own it does not yet ask for anyone. That is what demands are for.

A demand is a need for people​

A demand is a job's need for a number of people in a particular role, over a stretch of the job's dates. One job usually has several demands, one for each role it needs filled.

A demand carries:

  • A role. The job role you need, for example a deck crew role or a crane operator role. This is the same catalogue of roles you use elsewhere, so a demand for a role lines up with the positions people hold.
  • A period. The dates the need runs for, which always stay inside the job's own dates.
  • A headcount per shift. How many people each shift needs. A day and night pattern, for example, can ask for a different number on each.

Because a demand asks for a role and a headcount rather than a named person, you can plan the shape of the work before you decide exactly who fills it.

A crew change swaps people on and off​

Offshore and field work runs in rotations, so the same demand is covered by different people at different times. A crew change is the moment one person rotates off a job and another rotates on to take their place.

Crew changes are how a demand stays covered across a long job without any one person being on the whole time. You read and manage them per job once people are assigned.

How it all reaches the schedule​

Jobs and demands describe what is needed. The schedule is where you meet those needs with real people:

  1. You set up the building blocks first: facilities, job types, and roles. See Set up facilities, roles, and job types.
  2. You create a job and give it demands.
  3. On the schedule board you assign people to each demand, shift by shift, until the job is covered. See How rotations, demands, and assignments fit together.
  4. Reports read back the result, for example who is personnel on board (POB) on any given day.

A demand that is fully covered means every shift has the headcount it asked for. A demand that is short is a gap you still need to fill.