Effectiveness of Overtime in Construction Scheduling

The use of overtime as an effective construction schedule acceleration strategy is often looked at as a simple means to add hours to the workweek and shorten activity durations. To achieve the desired results, the long-term effects of overtime must be identified and analyzed before implementing an overtime acceleration plan.

Productivity can dramatically drop after only a few weeks of scheduled overtime. Prolonged overtime can cause drops in productivity by over 30%. Through proper planning and resource loading the construction schedule, effective overtime acceleration can be achieved by cycling the overtime by crews. The overtime should be scheduled when the resource demands exceed the available crew size. Furthermore, the duration of the overtime cycles must be limited to prevent dramatic productivity loss.