Architecture Capacity & Burnout Radar
Early warnings before overtime becomes "normal"
Detect sustained overtime, budget burn, and deadline stacking across your team. Produces a weekly capacity snapshot, flags risk, and drafts corrective actions — scope resets, staffing asks, or fee/variation language — before burnout and margin collapse set in.
INGREDIENTS
PROMPT
Create a skill called "Capacity & Burnout Radar" for an architecture practice. Every week, I'll feed you timesheet totals, project budget status, and upcoming deliverable deadlines. You should: 1. Flag any team member who has exceeded target hours (default 40h) for 2+ consecutive weeks 2. Calculate each project's hours-to-fee burn rate and flag any project where burn exceeds 85% with more than 30% of schedule remaining 3. Detect deadline congestion: two or more immovable deliverables (DD packages, permit sets, addenda) within a 14-business-day window for the same team 4. Produce a one-page capacity brief listing the top 5 risks and a recommended intervention for each (scope reset, staffing ask, or fee adjustment) 5. Draft an internal staffing request and/or a client-facing scope/fee adjustment email template based on the findings Output the brief in a clean, scannable format I can forward directly.
How It Works
This recipe turns scattered timesheets and project budgets into a weekly
early-warning system. It watches for overtime trends, budget burn rates, and
deadline congestion — then generates a one-page brief with risks and
recommended interventions so you can act before a problem becomes a crisis.
What You Get
- Overtime trend tracking: flags any team member exceeding target hours for 2+ consecutive weeks
- Budget burn monitoring: alerts when hours-to-fee burn rate passes a threshold (e.g., >85% budget used with >30% schedule remaining)
- Deadline congestion detection: warns when two or more immovable deliverables (DD packages, permit sets, addenda) land within 10 business days for the same team
- Weekly capacity brief: a one-page snapshot with the top 5 risks and recommended interventions
- Draft communications: internal staffing request template and/or client-facing scope/fee adjustment email, ready to send
Setup Steps
- Define your baseline parameters: target weekly hours (e.g., 40), overtime warning threshold (e.g., 45), and burn rate warning percentage (e.g., 85%)
- Set your lookahead window for deadline congestion (e.g., 14 business days)
- List the deliverable types that count as immovable deadlines (DD packages, permit sets, addenda, etc.)
- Feed in your time/budget data source — timesheet exports, PM tool reports, or manual inputs
- Schedule the weekly run and set the distribution list (PM, principal, or both)
Tips
- Start with generous thresholds and tighten as you learn your team's rhythms
- The brief is most useful when distributed on Monday mornings — it sets the week's priorities
- Pair with calendar integration to catch upcoming deadline clusters you haven't planned around yet
- The staffing request template saves the most time when you're already stretched too thin to write one