We won the work and now we can't staff it
You cannot staff the work because nobody compared the pipeline to the team's capacity before you signed. Sales forecasts revenue by month. Delivery holds availability in a spreadsheet or in someone's head. The two numbers meet for the first time when the client asks for a start date.
Written for agencies, consultancies and practices between £500k and £15M that sell time. The cost of getting this wrong is not the overtime. It is the margin you give back through subcontractors booked late, and the client who remembers the first six weeks.
The two numbers that never meet
A pipeline in pounds tells you nothing about whether you can deliver. Convert each opportunity into the hours it needs, by grade and by month, and set it against the hours your team has left. Most firms that do this for the first time find a gap they have been absorbing for years.
| What most firms track | What staffing needs | Why the gap hurts |
|---|---|---|
| Pipeline value in pounds, weighted by probability. | Hours by grade, by month, weighted the same way. | Two jobs of equal value can need completely different people at completely different times. |
| Headcount. | Available hours after holiday, admin, internal work and the jobs already running. | Headcount flatters capacity by a third or more, and the missing third is the part you sold. |
| Start dates agreed with clients. | Start dates the team can hold, including ramp-up. | A start date agreed in a sales call is a commitment made by someone who is not delivering it. |
| Utilisation last month. | Utilisation forecast for the next twelve weeks. | Last month cannot be staffed. Next month can. |
The four-week capacity view
One view, updated weekly, covering the next twelve weeks: committed hours by grade, available hours by grade, and weighted pipeline hours by grade. Three lines on a chart. Where the committed and weighted lines cross the available line, you have a staffing decision, and you still have four weeks to make it.
Convert the pipeline to hours
At the point you quote, record the hours by grade the job needs and the month it starts. Your estimator already worked this out to price it. Capture it instead of discarding it.
Net down capacity honestly
Start from contracted hours. Take out holiday, training, internal work, pitching and the administration everyone does. What remains is what you can sell.
Set a trigger, not a target
Agree the coverage level that starts a conversation: a contractor booked, a start date moved, a job declined. Write the number down so the trigger fires without a debate.
Give the decision to one person
Resourcing needs a single owner with authority to move a date or book a freelancer up to a value. A committee reviewing a chart changes nothing.
The view sits alongside the weekly project margin view and gets reviewed in the same meeting. Together they answer whether you can deliver the work and whether delivering it will earn anything.
What to do when you have already signed
Four options, and three of them are better than the one most firms choose by default. Firms default to absorbing it: senior people work late, quality holds for a while, and the margin quietly disappears. Choosing deliberately beats absorbing it.
Move the start date. Clients accept a two-week move far more often than founders expect, especially when you offer it early and with a reason. Ask in week one, not week five.
Buy the capacity. A subcontractor booked in advance costs less than the same subcontractor booked in a panic, and far less than a late delivery. Price it against the margin on the job, not against your internal day rate.
Reduce the scope of the first phase. Deliver the part that proves value, and reschedule the rest into a period you can staff. Most clients care more about the first outcome than the full programme.
Decline the next one. The job you should not take is usually the one after the job you cannot staff. A written coverage trigger makes that decision in advance, when it is easy.
When the real problem is pricing
A firm that is permanently short of people at current prices has a pricing problem wearing a staffing costume. If every won job needs overtime to deliver at the quoted margin, the quote is wrong, and hiring will move the loss rather than remove it.
Test it on one job. Take the hours actually delivered, cost them at a loaded rate, and compare with the fee. Do it for three jobs of the same type. If the pattern holds, change the rate or the scope before you add a person. The mechanism behind that gap is set out in every quote is a guess.
Common questions
How far ahead should a capacity plan look?
Twelve weeks, reviewed weekly. Shorter than that and a staffing decision arrives too late to act on, since recruiting takes longer and even a subcontractor needs notice. Longer than twelve weeks and the pipeline is too speculative to staff against, so the plan becomes a forecast nobody trusts.
What utilisation should we be aiming for?
Set the target from your own cost base rather than from an industry figure. Work out the billable hours each grade must deliver to cover their loaded cost and the overhead share, then add the margin you price for. A target borrowed from a benchmark report will be wrong for your mix of grades and your overhead.
Should we hire or use contractors?
Hire against demand you can see holding for at least two quarters. Use contractors for the peak above that line. Firms that hire against a peak carry the cost through the trough that follows, which is the pattern that turns a busy year into a flat one.
Who should own resourcing?
One person, with authority to move a start date and to book external capacity up to an agreed value without asking. Splitting it between sales and delivery guarantees the gap reappears, because neither side owns the number where the two plans meet.
Related reading: Project margin that arrives too late · Every quote is a guess · Fractional COO for agencies · Meetings that produce decisions
Put the two numbers side by side
Bring your pipeline for the next quarter and a rough view of who is free. Half an hour will show where the two lines cross, and what the gap has been costing you.
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