Global Business Process

Timesheet guidance & rules

OVERVIEW
Your time is our greatest asset. We understand how hard everybody works and believe it is vital that your
hard work never goes unrecorded.

Professional services organisations around the world like Buro Happold respect and value people’s work
through recording the value of their time. Timesheets are the industry standard for recording this effort.

Business performance can only be measured by accurate booking of project time. To deliver successful
projects for our clients we need to ensure we’re allocating adequate time and resources, while making sure
our teams are balancing work with home life and planned time off

By recording each hour you spend working on a project, whether it was planned or not, and regardless of
your contracted hours, we’re better able to understand not only the progress and financial performance of
our projects, getting visibility of the value and effort you are giving to our projects, but also identify any areas
where you might need more support, as well as making informed decisions with regards to client billing.

Accurate timesheets inform our percentage complete which ensures we are reporting revenue accurately.
This is something our external auditors check during their annual audits. Line managers have a responsibility
for ensuring that those reporting to them submit accurate and prompt timesheets.

When we are pricing future work, having a clear understanding of the overall cost and the time taken to
deliver past projects is critical.

Utilisation
Achieving utilisation targets is just as important as achieving project profitability targets. If utilisation targets
are not met, cost rates may increase, putting further pressure on achieving project profit targets.

Utilisation is a measure of how much time you spend on project work, expressed as percentage of your total
working hours. Each fee-earning employee role has a utilisation target, calculated annually depending on the
expectations of that role, and an hourly cost rate. These two measures work hand in hand: if you book project
time up to or above your utilisation target, you cover the cost of your employment and associated overhead
costs. We report on utilisation every month to measure our progress against our business objectives or
budgets. The more project time you book, the higher your actual utilisation rate will be.

Utilisation targets are set to reflect the expectations of a particular grade and the requirements of a particular
role and naturally there are regional variations for the same grades/roles across the practice. You can check
your personal utilisation target in the resourcing heatmap or discipline dashboard.

For example, a utilisation target of 80% means that over the course of a year, you are expected to book a
minimum of 80% of your time to projects, with the remaining 20% booked to non-project time, public
holidays, and your annual leave.

Copyright © 1976-2022 Buro Happold. All rights reserved Nov 2022

Business Rules

1. Submit your timesheet by 12pm local time each Monday without exception
2. Submit your timesheets in advance of any type of planned leave including public holidays
3. Completing timesheets and recording the time spent delivering projects is a key part of project work and must be
booked to the project
4. Never book time spent on project activities to non-project time
5. Your weekly timesheet should be an accurate record of all the hours worked each week even if this is more than your
planned or contracted hours. For example, if you have worked through your lunch break, this should be recorded as
additional hours
6. If you book additional hours, remember to use the A-code for unpaid additional hours or the P-code for paid
additional hours
7. Any paid additional hours must be agreed in advance in writing with your line manager
8. Book all the time spent working on a project to the project, taking care to book to the correct workstage
9. Only book genuine non-project time to non-project timecodes
10. All non-project time booked must be annotated in Unit 4 with the reason for the non-project time
11. Every bid should have a P-project. Book all time spent working on the bid to the relevant P-project. It’s important to
remember the P-project might not be in your own cost centre
12. If you are working on a bid with a team based in another business unit, you will need to book your time to a “mirror”
P-project in your own business unit, which your POM team can help to create

Project time booking

There are 2 types of projects that we can book costs and claim revenue against. These projects have a fee.
The first character of the project number defines the type of project

Project number example Type of project

starts with

0 0054321-0000-0 Regular fee-earning project for an external client

I I054321-0103-0 Internal projects, where we are working for ourselves for example C:Lab.
The fee for internal projects is funded by BH using the profit from regular
fee earning projects for external clients

Copyright © 1976-2022 Buro Happold. All rights reserved Nov 2022

Non-project time booking
We book costs but do not claim revenue against non-project time. There is no fee. The cost of non-project
time is covered by profits from fee-earning projects. Our projects are the only source of funds.

Project number Example Type of non-project activity

starts with

P P052013-0000-0 P projects are used to plan work and book costs for a project during bid
stage, before the bid has been won or lost. All time spent preparing the
bid must be booked here

T T005862-4950-0 T projects are internally-funded technical development projects, not

specific to a single fee-earning project, but could benefit many projects

Z Z000101-02**-0 Business development is only for booking time spent developing leads
and opportunities with clients, and must not be used for bids
** code
indicates your Z000101-03**-0 Marketing is only used for PR, events & seminars, developing materials,
business unit representing BH officially at non-project events

Z000105-01**-0 Administration must only be used for exceptional items such as office
fire drills or IT support, i.e. issues related to your employment, that
prevent you from doing project work, and cannot be legitimately coded
to any of the other non-project codes

Z000105-02**-0 Group Management and Meetings is for non-project activities relating

to managing a team

Z000106-03**-0 L & D and Mentoring is for recording agreed personal development

activity including, formal learning, knowledge sharing and career
conversations. The time spent on your CPO is booked here

Z000107-01**-0 Design and Technical Development is for agreed non-project

innovation and development work for your team or discipline

Z000102-01**-0 Annual Leave must be booked in the Unit 4 Absence module, and will
be pushed into your timesheet by the system

Z000103-01**-0 Public Holidays are pre-populated by our HR team

Z000104-01**-0 Sickness must be booked in the Unit 4 Absence module, and will be
pushed into your timesheet by the system

Z000108-02**-0 Other Leave depending on the type of leave must be booked in Unit 4
Absence module, or prepopulated by our HR team

Z000108-03**-0 Reduced Working Hours/POETS for example POETS Day in the UK,
Ramadan in the Middle East

Z000108-07**-0 Unpaid Leave depending on the type of leave must be booked in Unit 4
Absence module, or prepopulated by local HR

Copyright © 1976-2022 Buro Happold. All rights reserved Nov 2022