Tag Archive for: administrative support

All projects demand some level of administrative work to support project plan updates; progress report development, printing, and dissemination; issue and risk register maintenance; team member contact list maintenance and update communications; personnel and facilities coordination and scheduling; team and stakeholder communications development and dissemination; etcetera. And the amount of administrative work increases with the scope and complexity of the project. If singularly assigned to project specialists, this work detracts from these individuals’ productivity; unnecessarily inflating time and monetary costs.[wcm_restrict plans=”41116, 25542, 25653″]

An Illustrative Example

Case 1 – No Administrative Support

A semi-complex project lasting one year is to be executed by a team of 10 specialists. Each specialist earns $100,000 per year and is burdened with an estimated 20 percent administrative workload. Thus, the project workload is 8 person-years of specialist work and 2 person-years of administrative work. This project will be completed in one year at the cost of $1,000,000.

Each of 10 specialists performs 292 days of specialist work and 73 days of administrative work
Total Project Work: 2,920 days of specialist work and 730 days of administrative work

Case 2 – Cost Savings

The same semi-complex project lasting one year is executed by a team of 9 specialists and 1 administrative assistant. Each specialist earns $100,000 and the administrative assistant $40,000 per year. The workload for this project remains 8 person-years of specialist work and 2 person-years of administrative work. In this case, however, the assistant assumes 1 person-year of administrative work from the specialists; enabling the 9 specialists to complete a higher percentage of the dedicated work relative to those in Case 1. This project will be completed in one year at the cost of $940,000 – a savings of $60,000.

Each of 9 specialists performs 324.4 days of specialist work and 40.6 days of administrative work
The 1 administrative assistant performs 365 days of administrative work
Total Project Work: 2,920 days of specialist work and 730 days of administrative work

Case 3 – Time Savings

The same semi-complex project is executed by a team of 10 specialists and 1 administrative assistant. Each specialist earns $100,000 and the administrative assistant $40,000 per year. The workload for this project remains 8 person-years of specialist work and 2 person-years of administrative work. In this case, however, the assistant assumes a significant portion of the administrative work load from the specialists; enabling the 10 specialists to complete a higher percentage of the dedicated work relative to those in Case 1. This project will be completed in 11 months at the cost of $953,333 – a savings of $46,667 and 1 month.

Each of 10 specialists performs 292 days of specialist work and 40 days of administrative work
The 1 administrative assistant performs 330 days of administrative work
Total Project Work: 2,920 days of specialist work and 730 days of administrative work

In this illustrative example, it was assumed that the assistant would take the same amount of time to perform the administrative work as did a specialist. Quite the opposite is often true. Because the assistant is trained and practiced on the performance of administrative work, this individual usually performs the work with much greater proficiency and productivity; further enhancing overall project performance.

Final Thought…

Specialists will always need to perform some level of administrative work; however, it is in the financial interest of the company to limit this burden. While the point of payoff will differ from project-to-project, managers should analyze the financial benefits of adding one or more administrative assistants to large project teams and anytime individual team members are burdened with 10 percent or more administrative work for smaller teams.[/wcm_restrict][wcm_nonmember plans=”41116, 25542, 25653″]

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