How owners build a manpower curve from a resource-loaded schedule, why it drives camp, travel and cost on remote mining projects, and what to check.
On a remote mining project, labour is never just a line in the budget. Every person on site needs a bed in camp, a seat on a flight, meals, a rotation and the supervision to work safely. The manpower curve is the tool that ties those needs together. It shows how many people the project needs on site, by trade and by period, from first mobilization to final demobilization.
Built properly, it links the schedule, the estimate, the camp and the logistics plan into one picture. Built poorly, or not at all, it is where many remote projects first lose control of cost.
What a Manpower Curve Is
A manpower curve, also called a labour histogram, plots planned headcount over time. It is usually shown as bars for the number of workers in each week or month, often split by craft, with a cumulative S-curve of labour hours alongside it. The shape tells the story of the project: a ramp-up through mobilization and early works, a peak during the heaviest construction, and a ramp-down through completion and commissioning.
Building It from the Schedule
A reliable curve comes from the construction schedule, not from a separate spreadsheet. The steps are straightforward, but each one needs care:
- Resource-load the schedule. Each construction activity in the schedule, typically in Primavera P6, carries its estimated direct labour hours by craft, spread across the activity's duration.
- Reconcile to the estimate. The total hours in the schedule should match the labour hours in the control estimate. If they do not, either the schedule or the estimate is wrong, and the curve will be too.
- Convert hours to heads. Hours become headcount using the actual work pattern on site. For example, a crew working 10-hour shifts seven days a week works 70 hours per person per week, so 7,000 planned hours in that week means about 100 workers on site.
- Add the people the schedule leaves out. Supervision, the owner's team, camp and catering staff, security, medical and other support roles rarely appear in a construction schedule, but they all need beds and flights.
- Separate site headcount from the roster. On rotation, more people are on the payroll than on site. An equal rotation, such as 14 days in and 14 days out, needs roughly two workers on the roster for every position filled on site.
Why It Matters on Remote Sites
In a city, a contractor can add a crew on short notice. On a fly-in or winter-road site, every extra person has to be planned for months ahead. The manpower curve drives:
- Camp capacity. Peak headcount, including indirect and support staff, has to fit the beds available. A peak that exceeds camp capacity means either re-sequencing work or adding camp, and both cost time and money.
- Travel and logistics. Crew change days, charter flight seats and ground transport are all sized from the curve.
- Cost. Labour, and the camp, travel and support costs that come with each worker, make up a large share of field cost on a remote project. A peak that is higher than it needs to be carries that cost every day it lasts.
- Local and Indigenous hiring commitments. A curve split by craft shows when and where local workers can be brought on, which gives time to plan training and recruitment.
- Seasonal windows. Short construction seasons and winter road access often force work into tight windows, which pushes the peak higher. The curve makes that pressure visible early.
What Owners Should Look For
When a contractor or engineer presents a manpower curve, these are the questions worth asking:
- Is the peak sharp and narrow? A spike often means activities are crowded together. Resource levelling can usually lower the peak with little or no effect on the completion date.
- Does the peak fit the camp? Compare the curve, with support staff added, against confirmed bed capacity for the same period.
- Is the ramp-up realistic? Mobilizing people, equipment and camp takes time, and productivity is lower in the first weeks. A curve that jumps straight to full strength is optimistic.
- Do the hours reconcile? The area under the curve should match the labour hours in the estimate.
- How does actual compare to plan? Once construction starts, track actual headcount and hours against the curve every week. A site that stays below its planned headcount while reporting progress on schedule is worth questioning, because the work it has not done yet usually has to be recovered later at a higher peak.
How Praetorian Helps
Praetorian's project controls team works inside the owner's team to build and review resource-loaded schedules, develop manpower curves and test them against the estimate, the camp and the logistics plan. Once construction is under way, we track actual labour against plan alongside cost and earned value, so the owner sees a problem in the numbers before it shows up on site. It is one of the reasons project controls matter as much as they do in mining.
Our team has delivered projects in some of the most remote locations in Canada and abroad, and we know how much depends on getting the labour plan right. Read more about managing construction projects in remote and international locations, or contact our team to talk about the labour plan for your project.