Doing a Resource Plan using Project Management Templates

Doing a Resource Plan using Project Management Templates

Successfully delivering a project can be hard work. You need to manage staff, contractors, equipment and materials to achieve the project objectives and meet the customers requirements. To succeed, you really need to take these...

3 steps to doing a Resource Plan

A Resource Plan describes the physical resources required to complete a project. It lists each of the resource types (such as labor, equipment and materials) and it provides a schedule for the consumption of each resource respectively. If you would like to define a comprehensive Resource Plan for your project, then we suggest that you take the following 3 steps:

• list the required resource
• quantify the required resource
• construct a resource schedule

First, you need to identify all of the different types of resource needed to complete the project. You then need to quantify the amount of each type of resource required. And finally, you need to schedule the consumption of each resource within the project. Let us describe each step in a little more detail...

Step 1: List the Resource Required

You should start by listing the resources required to complete the project. 

• Labor. Identify all the roles involved in undertaking the project, including all full-time, part-time and contracting roles.
• Equipment. Identify all of the equipment involved in undertaking the project. For instance, this may include office equipment (e.g. PCs, photocopiers, mobile phones), telecommunications equipment (e.g. cabling, switches) and machinery (e.g. heavy and light machinery).
• Materials. Identify all of the non/consumable materials to complete project activities such as office materials (e.g. photocopy paper, stationery, ink cartridges) and materials required to build physical deliverables (e.g. wood, steel and concrete).

Step 2: Quantify the Resource Required

The next step is to describe the specification of each resource.

• for labor, list the skills and experience required by each role
• for equipment, list the specification of each equipment item
• for materials, list the type of each item of material required

Then quantify the amount of each resource by stating the total quantity needed, the date within which it must have been acquired and the date that it is expected to have been consumed by.

Step 3: Construct a Resource Schedule

You have now collated all the information required to build a detailed Resource Schedule. Create a resource schedule which specifies the:

• resources required to complete the project
• timeframes for the consumption of each resource
• quantity of each resource required per week
• total quantity of resource consumed per week
• assumptions and constraints identified

And that’s it! If you would like to download a Resource Management Plan for managing the labor, equipment and materials needed to undertake your projects, then see our planning templates from the main menu.