Staffing and departments

The feasibility engine can only calculate on what it knows. Three setups feed it: departments, the productions’ staffing requirements, and the timing standards for changeover and rehearsals.

Departments

The departments under Admin → Departments are the org chart — the unit events call in and approvals route through. When a department is called to an event, the engine treats every member of that department on the production as expected to attend, and checks them for collisions.

Departments can also carry prep and breakdown buffers per event type — minutes the department needs before and after. Two events that don’t overlap by themselves, but whose buffers do, are flagged as a buffer conflict.

The Staffing tab on the production

With GrandPlanner on, production managers get the Staffing tab:

• Role requirements — how many of each work role the production needs, optionally scoped to one department. Department-scoped requirements only apply when that department is actually called.
• Qualification pins — lock who may fill a work role on this particular production. Pins replace the org-wide pool.
• Changeover & lead time — changeover days before and after, and required rehearsal weeks. An empty field falls back to the org default.

The engine tiers candidates — primary, secondary, and tertiary from the work roles on the person profile. Zero available primaries for a requirement is a breach; fewer than required is a warning.

Defaults in one place

The organisation’s defaults for changeover days and rehearsal weeks are set in the GrandPlanner configuration under Admin → Policies — set them once, and override only the productions that deviate.