How much buffer should a field service schedule include?
Start with each job type's recent median duration, add realistic travel, and reserve capacity for the work that routinely runs over. Review the last four weeks of late jobs by service type and time of day. Use those results to set buffers, then reassess every month.
Schedule buffer time is the gap between a promise and a realistic route. One blanket fifteen-minute gap is easy to enter but rarely fits both a quick inspection and a complicated repair.
What data should you collect first?
For each completed visit, keep planned duration, actual on-site time, travel time, and reason for an overrun. Group similar work. If most jobs fit but one type repeatedly runs long, fix that job template instead of padding the entire day.
Where should spare capacity sit?
Put small travel allowances between distant stops and keep a larger open block where emergency calls commonly arrive. Give first-time work more room than repeat work. A dispatcher needs to see this capacity on the board; invisible slack is usually booked away.
How do you know the buffer is right?
Track on-time arrivals, overtime, and unused capacity together. A schedule that is always full but regularly late is oversold. A schedule with large empty blocks may have bad duration estimates or poor geographic grouping. Change one assumption at a time and compare the next month.
Common questions
- Should I add the same buffer to every job?
- Usually no. Use actual duration by job type and add travel based on the route. New or uncertain work deserves more room than a repeat visit with a known scope.