ABSTRACT
It is no great insight to note that how a subcontractor’s management operates its resources is a key factor in firm success. Nor is it a great insight to note that subcontractors work on multiple projects concurrently. Yet relatively little literature
exists to help subcontractors manage their resources beyond the productivity improvement literature for individual activities. There is a complete lack of tools that relate a subcontractor’s resource allocation across projects to cost (O’Brien & Fischer, 2000). Costing methods follow the assumptions of network scheduling methods, focusing on costs of individual activities and of single projects. No allowance is made for interaction between projects. Yet subcontractors emphatically do manage their resources from a multi-project perspective, taking a variety of actions to optimize resource allocation across projects in the face of changing conditions.
