Construction schedule calculator for man-hours and crew size
Turns a man-hour estimate into work days, calendar days and a finish date, after crew size, the working week, public holidays and a weather buffer.
Turn man-hours into a phase duration
Every field is filled in, so the result below is already worked through. Change any figure and the arithmetic follows.
Work days and calendar days
42 work days, 8.4 calendar weeks, finished on Thursday, October 29, 2026.
- 4 people × 8 hours = 32 man-hours produced on one working day.
- 1,200 man-hours ÷ 32 = 37.5 net work days.
- Buffer of 10 percent: 37.5 × 1.1 = 41.3, rounded up to 42 work days.
- The span picks up 1 of the 8 public holidays in a year.
- Together that fills 43 weekday slots in a five-day week.
- Starting Tuesday, September 1, 2026, that runs to Thursday, October 29, 2026: 59 calendar days, 8.4 calendar weeks.
How work days become calendar days
man-hours ÷ (crew size × hours per day) = net work days; × (1 + buffer) and rounded up = scheduled work days; laid on the working week from the start date and lengthened by the holidays inside the span = calendar days and the finish date.
The calculator schedules one phase. A real program has trades that overlap, a crew that moves between them and a delivery date that shifts the whole chain, and that is what the schedule inside Home Builder Software holds.
Questions about Construction schedule calculator for man-hours and crew size
How many man-hours does it take to build a house?
There is no single figure that transfers between projects, because it depends on the construction method, the level of prefabrication and the finish. Use hours recorded on your own completed projects, or the labor lines of a takeoff. This calculator converts whatever figure you trust into days; it does not produce the figure.
What is the difference between work days and calendar days?
A work day is a day the crew is on site and producing. A calendar day is any day on the calendar, weekends and holidays included. Contracts usually state completion in calendar days while an estimate produces work days, and the gap between the two is roughly forty percent on a five-day week.
How do I turn phase durations into a full construction schedule?
Run the calculator once per trade, using the finish date of one trade as the start date of the next where they cannot overlap. Where two trades share the building, start the second one part-way through the first and take the later of the two finish dates. Home Builder Software keeps that dependency chain per project.
Use the calculation with your own project data
Request a trial period and tell us which workflow you want to test. We prepare Home Builder Software around that part of your work without fixing a term before we know the scope.