Overtime or Supplemental Crew? Run the Math First

By Friday afternoon the three-week lookahead is behind, and the superintendent has two ways to catch up. Keep the current electricians on 5x10s or 6x10s, or bring more people in on Monday. It is easy to price that choice as two hourly rates. The productivity studies on electrical and mechanical crews put more of the cost somewhere else, in hours lost to fatigue and crowding.

A few weeks of overtime can cost nothing, or 25 percent

The Construction Industry Institute's Source Document 98 tracked 151 weeks of piping and electrical crew data on four industrial projects between 1989 and 1992. Claims consultants Regula Brunies and Zey Emir of Revay and Associates summarized it in The Revay Report in 2001. Short-term overtime losses averaged about 15 percent and ranged from none to 25 percent. The study also found it was possible to work three to four weeks of overtime without losing productivity. It put the root cause on the increased difficulty of getting resources to a crew working longer days.

Long overtime is different.

Hanna, Taylor and Sullivan of the University of Wisconsin studied 88 projects, collected mostly from union electrical and mechanical contractors reached through NECA, MCAA and CII, for a 2005 paper in the Journal of Construction Engineering and Management. They measured a productivity index (budgeted hours divided by actual hours). The medians drop as the hours rise, and the 6x10 falls furthest.

The paper's worked example is an industrial job that averaged 61.0 hours a week for 67 weeks. It ran 103,059 hours over budget, and the model assigns 82,546 of those hours to overtime inefficiency.

Business Roundtable Report C-2, from November 1980 and reproduced in a High Bridge Associates reference document, says that "where a work schedule of 60 or more hours per week is continued longer than about two months," the job finishes later than it would have with the same crew on 40 hours. For a 60-hour week paid at double time, it put the rise in unit labor cost at 100 to 105 percent after about eight weeks.

Be careful about borrowing any of these percentages. H. Randolph Thomas of Penn State wrote in 1992 that the Business Roundtable data "all originated from a single project," a Procter & Gamble operation in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Brunies and Emir wrote that published charts "should only be used with the greatest caution." They call the measured mile, which compares the job's own normal weeks with its affected weeks, the most convincing method.

On electrical work, more hands did worse than more hours

One study built on electrical crews alone is Hanna's 2011 report for ELECTRI International, the Foundation for Electrical Construction. Its data came from electrical workers on projects built between 2004 and 2008. Losses grew the longer overtime ran, and Hanna still wrote that "placing an electrical crew on overtime schedule is more efficient than overmanning."

The contractors he surveyed rated the alternatives to extended overtime from 0 to 10. A second shift scored 6.1, rolling crews 4.8, a third shift 3.9 and overmanning 2.3, most likely because once extra workers are on site it gets harder to keep everyone supplied with tools, material and room to work.

Mike Holt worked the arithmetic in an EC&M column on a 1,200-hour job planned for six weeks with five electricians. "If you accelerate the job to three weeks, you'll need 10 electricians; and your labor productivity will probably decrease," Holt wrote.

Added electricians need a receiving plan before they arrive

Chang, Hanna, Lackney and Sullivan described the problem in a 2005 schedule-compression paper. Supervision and material have to grow with the headcount, they wrote, because "dilution of supervision plus a shortage of materials, tools, and equipment can lead to a productivity loss." Space is the other limit. A room sized for one crew may not fit two.

The Crusoe data center in Abilene, Texas, is a large example of planning for it. According to ENR, Rosendin Electric pulled workers "from California to Maine," had more than 1,200 on site and committed 180 supervisors to the project, roughly one for every seven workers at that count. DPR Construction changed how crews moved between data halls. "We've gone from less of a standard crew flow to a hopscotch," says Reuben Cheatham, DPR's preconstruction lead. When the crew in hall A finishes, it goes to hall C, and the hall B crew goes to D. Thomas Stemmerman, Rosendin's general superintendent, says the team took "what could have been a 154-day delay" and brought it down to 28 days.

Small shops that lose people to those jobs end up training replacements. Scotty Wristen, owner of WE Electric in Abilene, lost five workers to the data centers, which pay $35 an hour plus overtime and per diem against his $20, The Texas Tribune reported. He now hires teenagers out of high school as apprentices. "They don't even have a set of tools," Wristen says. He told the Tribune that new apprentices usually take four or five months to get up to speed, and the early mistakes cost time and money. "It's fixable," he says. "And once they are trained in it, you don't have those little deals anymore."

Under 29 CFR 1926.21(b)(2), the employer "shall instruct each employee in the recognition and avoidance of unsafe conditions" and the regulations that apply to the work. OSHA's coordination guidance tells host employers to "ensure that staffing agency workers are adequately trained and equipped before arriving on the worksite." Its temporary worker page says the staffing agency and the host employer are both responsible for a safe workplace. Name the receiving foreman, the released area, the drawing revision and the material location before anyone badges in. The first morning itself is covered in a better first-day orientation for supplemental crews.

Fatigue shows up in the injury rates

A crew that already knows the drawings is an advantage on overtime, but it is still a tired crew. Dembe, Erickson, Delbos and Banks of the University of Massachusetts Medical School used survey responses from 10,793 U.S. workers covering 1987 to 2000, and in Occupational and Environmental Medicine they reported a 61 percent higher injury hazard rate in jobs with overtime schedules. Working at least 12 hours a day came with a 37 percent higher hazard rate. Working at least 60 hours a week, which a 6x10 does, came with a 23 percent higher rate.

Night crews are not a free fix. OSHA's worker fatigue page puts accident and injury rates 18 percent higher on evening shifts and 30 percent higher on nights than on days.

Price the overtime hour the way payroll will

The Fair Labor Standards Act requires at least time and a half after 40 hours in a workweek, and the Department of Labor says averaging hours over two or more weeks is not permitted. California adds daily overtime after 8 hours and double time after 12, so a 4x10 there can cost more than the federal rule suggests unless the employer has an alternative workweek schedule in place. Travel expense payments that reasonably approximate what the worker spends, including living expenses away from home, stay out of the regular rate under 29 CFR 778.217, so they do not raise the overtime rate. Time and a half is figured on pay, not on the whole compensation package. At the June 2026 private construction industry average in the Bureau of Labor Statistics Employer Costs for Employee Compensation, $36.13 an hour in wages ($51.96 with benefits), the half-time premium adds roughly $18 to each overtime hour on top of straight time.

Shifts and split crews are a third option

Report C-2 says "two or three shifts are often more productive than extended overtime." A 2005 shift-work study by Hanna's group, on mechanical and sheet metal work, measured anything from an 11 percent gain to a 17 percent loss as shift work went from 1 to 50 percent of budgeted hours. It recommends that the first-shift foreman stay 1 to 2 hours longer while the second-shift foreman comes in 1 to 2 hours early. Electrical Contractor described another version in a piece on ELECTRI research by Hala Nassereddine. One group works Monday through Thursday and a second works Tuesday through Friday.

On a live job, the current crew keeps the tie-ins, testing and layout it already knows. The added electricians take a bounded package, for example the released conduit and supports in Area C through inspection. Write that package down, with its limits, before the new crew's start date.

Finding the extra electricians is its own problem in 2026

In the AGC and NCCER 2026 Workforce Survey, answered by 1,830 people in July and August, 81 percent of firms with electrician openings reported difficulty filling them. In EC&M's 2026 Top 50 report, 83 percent of the responding contractors reported labor shortages, nine points more than the year before, and electricians were the hardest slot to fill.

Whichever option wins on Friday, write down when it ends. Hanna wrote that the best use of his electrical study "is for forward pricing," before the work starts. Most of the contractors he surveyed had no written rule for it. In his 2011 survey, 18.9 percent of projects used extended overtime, and only 31.3 percent of the contractors had a company policy on its use.

This article is general information, not legal advice. Check wage-and-hour rules for your job with an employment lawyer.

Sources

1. Construction Productivity Impacts due to Extended Work Weeks, Shift Work, and Fatigue, Industry Reference Document 24 of 32 (reproduces Business Roundtable Report C-2, 1980; Thomas, 1992; Hanna, Taylor and Sullivan, 2005; and the 2005 Construction Research Congress papers on schedule compression and shift work), High Bridge Associates, 2017.
2. Calculating Loss of Productivity Due to Overtime Using Published Charts: Fact or Fiction, Regula Brunies and Zey Emir, The Revay Report Vol. 20 No. 3, Revay and Associates, November 2001.
3. Impact of Overtime on Electrical Labor Productivity: A Measured Mile Approach, Awad S. Hanna, ELECTRI International, 2011.
4. Adjusting Labor Units the Smart Way, Mike Holt, EC&M, September 1, 2000.
5. Project Team Pushes Limits on Abilene Data Center Job, Bruce Buckley, ENR, August 4, 2025.
6. Data center boom strains Texas homebuilders' need for electricians, Sneha Dey, The Texas Tribune, April 28, 2026.
7. 29 CFR 1926.21, Safety training and education, Occupational Safety and Health Administration, accessed September 29, 2026.
8. Communication and Coordination for Host Employers, Contractors, and Staffing Agencies, Occupational Safety and Health Administration, accessed September 29, 2026.
9. Protecting Temporary Workers, Occupational Safety and Health Administration, accessed September 29, 2026.
10. The impact of overtime and long work hours on occupational injuries and illnesses: new evidence from the United States, A. Dembe, J. Erickson, R. Delbos and S. Banks, Occupational and Environmental Medicine, September 2005.
11. Long Work Hours, Extended or Irregular Shifts, and Worker Fatigue: Hazards, Occupational Safety and Health Administration, accessed September 29, 2026.
12. Fact Sheet #23: Overtime Pay Requirements of the FLSA, U.S. Department of Labor, Wage and Hour Division, revised October 2019.
13. Overtime, California Department of Industrial Relations, Labor Commissioner's Office, accessed September 29, 2026.
14. 29 CFR 778.217, Reimbursement for expenses, Legal Information Institute, Cornell Law School, accessed September 29, 2026.
15. Employer Costs for Employee Compensation, Table 4, private industry workers by occupational and industry group, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, June 2026.
16. Is the 4x10 Workweek Viable for Electrical Construction?, Jared Christman, Electrical Contractor, December 18, 2025.
17. 2026 Workforce Survey Analysis, Associated General Contractors of America and NCCER, September 3, 2026.
18. Data Center Buildout Fuels Revenue Blowout: EC&M's 2026 Top 50 Electrical Contractors Special Report, Tom Zind, EC&M, September 15, 2026.

Featured image: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Los Angeles District (public domain).