Resources are everything needed to carry out a project’s tasks. They include people, plant and equipment, materials, facilities, tools, supplies and anything else that can be defined and is required to complete an activity.
In construction planning, resources are assigned to each activity in the programme so the contractor can check that labour, plant and materials will be available when needed. Resource histograms show demand over time, and resource levelling smooths out peaks to avoid overcommitting gangs or plant. For the quantity surveyor, resources are the building blocks of cost. A unit rate is built up from the labour, plant and materials needed to complete one unit of work, and a resourced programme is often used to support or test time related costs such as preliminaries. Common resource categories are:
- labour, including supervision
- plant and equipment
- materials
- subcontractors
Related terms: resource levelling, unit rate, programme, preliminaries.
