Planning technicians in plumbing, heating and gas: how to balance emergencies with installations
An emergency cannot be planned, but room can be left for it. The difference between a calm week and a hectic one is usually whether the reserve is in the plan beforehand or gets looked for in the morning.
Planning technicians in plumbing, heating and gas differs from other trades in that a large part of the work arrives unannounced. A boiler emergency at eight in the morning has no appointment and will not wait for a free day. The plan should therefore not be as full as possible, but should have room ready for the morning job to fit into without dropping the gas boilers booked for commissioning.
- Hold the reserve for emergencies in the plan beforehand, do not look for it in the morning.
- Derive the size of the reserve from your own records, not from a guess.
- A gas licence belongs with the technician as a data item, not in the dispatcher's memory.
- Plan regular boiler inspections for spring and summer, otherwise they pile up into autumn.
- From three technicians, the morning reshuffle cannot be done without a plan that is visible as a whole.
How this trade differs from the others
The share of unannounced work. In HVAC most jobs are arranged in advance; here part of the orders come in by phone in the morning and have to be dealt with the same day. So the plan should not be a schedule that gets filled, but a schedule that can take a change.
The second difference is seasonality, and it is sharper than expected. Boiler breakdowns come in the heating season, commissioning is concentrated just before it, and regular inspections only fit into the rest of the year if they are thought about from spring.
The third difference is licensing. Work on gas equipment is tied to professional qualification, so a free technician does not yet mean a usable technician. When the plan is being reshuffled in the morning, this constraint is harder than time.
How much room to leave for what comes in the morning
Unplanned work cannot be predicted individually, but in total it behaves quite regularly. A procedure for deriving the reserve from your own operation:
- For two months, write down every job that came in the same day or the day before. A tally mark next to the date is enough.
- Split them into the heating season and the rest of the year, because they differ.
- Count how many came in an average week, and how many of them took more than half a day.
- Leave that many half-days free in the plan in advance, not as general slack, but with specific people on specific days.
- Hold the reserve with technicians who have the required licences. A free slot with someone who is not allowed to work on gas will not save a boiler emergency.
- Whatever is not used up by Friday, fill with work that can wait: inspections, finishing unfinished jobs, a round of small jobs.
Point six is the reason the reserve holds in practice. Without it, free space looks like waste and the first person who looks at the plan fills it with an installation.
The seasonal peak and regular inspections
Autumn carries a double load in this trade: the first breakdowns arrive and at the same time everything that should have been done before the season is still being finished. Regular boiler inspections will not fit into it, even if the company thinks so in spring.
| Period | What to plan | What to leave for another time |
|---|---|---|
| Spring | Regular inspections, post-season service | Large installations with delivery in autumn |
| Summer | Refurbishments, boiler replacements, technicians' holidays | Inspections put off to the last minute |
| Autumn | Commissioning, finishing replacements | Inspections that could have been done in May |
| Winter | Breakdowns, emergencies, minor repairs | Everything that can wait |
What matters is knowing when the last inspection took place for each customer. Without that, inspections are not planned but remembered, and they get remembered in November. Companies that do a lot of recurring inspections run into this first; it is described in more detail under inspections and regular checks.
The licence belongs with the technician, not in memory
Work on gas equipment is tied to a licence. As long as one person holds the plan, they know it by heart. Once more people plan, or planning happens in a morning rush, memory is the weakest point in the whole process.
Capacity and skills show who is free in a given period, who has the required qualification and who is absent. You name the qualifications however you like: gas, heating, plumbing, welding. The filter then returns only the technicians who are allowed to do the job in question.
The practical consequence is that when someone's licence expires, you remove the skill and they stop being offered in the plan. It is not an extra check; on the contrary, it is the only check that does not depend on whether someone remembers it at six in the morning.
What the morning reshuffle looks like when you see the whole plan
An emergency means something else has to move. The question is not whether it happens, but how many phone calls it will cost.
In the planning board technicians are in rows and days in columns. Assignments are entered by dragging across cells and the app warns of a clash on save, so you can see not only the free space but also what the move will break. A multi-day boiler replacement stays one continuous bar, not three entries that can be split apart by mistake.
The other half is making sure the technician and the customer learn about the change. The technician sees the current day on their phone, so there is no need to call about what changed. A customer whose appointment is being moved is sent a link with free days through the appointment offer and picks one themselves, instead of negotiating over three calls.
From how many technicians it pays off
From three. Up to two people, one person holds the plan in their head and phones one colleague when something changes in the morning. From three, combinations grow faster than people: who is free, who has a gas licence, whose afternoon appointment can be moved and who the customer is expecting.
One could object that an experienced dispatcher remembers it even with five. They can, as long as they are at work. The problem is not their memory, but that on the day of their holiday there is no way to get at that information.
From three people a second thing also starts to show: technicians take turns with one customer, and the one who comes to a repeat breakdown was not at the previous one.
What the plan will not solve
It will not reduce the number of emergencies. A reserve in the plan does not make fewer boilers fail, it only ensures that agreed appointments do not have to be torn up for them.
Nor does it replace the decisions that belong to the person who plans: whether two jobs in the same part of town are combined into one day, how much time to allow for a replacement and when to tell the customer that it will not get done today. The plan shows this decision, it does not make it.
What goes away is the finding out. The morning question of who is free and who is allowed to do it has its answer in the plan, not in five phone calls.
Frequently asked questions
How do you plan technicians when half the work comes in unplanned?
Unplanned work cannot be predicted individually, but it can be estimated in total. Measure over two months how many emergency jobs come in per week and leave that much room free in the plan beforehand. A reserve held in the plan is cheaper than daily reshuffling.
How much capacity should be left free for emergencies?
As much as usually comes in according to your own records, not a guess. In the heating season it tends to be noticeably more than in summer. It is practical to hold the reserve in whole half-days with specific people, not as general slack in the plan.
How do you make sure a technician without a licence is not sent to a gas job?
Keep the licence with the technician as a skill and plan through a filter that does not offer technicians without it. When the licence expires, the skill is removed and the technician stops being offered. A check in the dispatcher's head does not reliably catch this.
When should regular boiler inspections be planned so they do not collide with the heating season?
In spring and summer, that is, outside the time when breakdowns come. What matters is the date of the last inspection for each customer, not when someone happens to remember them. Without records of deadlines, inspections pile up into autumn, where there is no longer room for them.
From how many technicians is it worth keeping the plan somewhere other than in your head?
From three. Up to two people, one person holds the plan and phones one colleague when something changes. From three there are so many combinations of free people, licences and appointments under discussion that the morning reshuffle cannot be done without a plan that is visible as a whole.
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