Forecasting Staffing Requirements for Hazardous Waste Cleanup.

Abstract : This report addresses a need to be able to forecast the staffing levels required to supervise cleanups of hazardous waste sites in support of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. A Civil Works' Superfund staffing requirements model based on statistical analysis of historic workload data. It is based on the assumption that the size and complexity of future programs will be related to the size and complexity of past programs. A wide variety of factors affect staffing levels, but it was found that the two most important ones are total cost and project type or complexity. The three types of work used in the model are remedial design, supervision of remedial construction, and additional technical assistance to the Environmental Protection Agency. Historical data was used to determine the relationship between dollars spent and man hours expended for various types of work: the distribution of project sizes, durations, and start dates; and the functional relationship between time spent and work accomplished. Prototype models for prediction of staffing needs have been developed from this data.