Utilisation is 87%. Nobody has a code for rework.

The most expensive activity in most service businesses is doing things a second time, and it is the one activity the timesheet is structurally incapable of showing you.

By Steve 5 min read
Abstract bridge artwork for Utilisation is 87%. Nobody has a code for rework.

A professional services firm with 87% utilisation and thin margins presents a puzzle. The team is busy. The rates are defensible. The jobs are, mostly, delivered. And yet the money that should be there isn’t, and every attempt to fix it by adding a person seems to add cost faster than it adds capacity. The usual explanations, underpricing, scope creep, poor estimating, all have some truth in them. But there is a quieter one that sits underneath all three, and it is almost never measured directly: a meaningful share of…

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