Crews originated in Maximo for Utilities and was introduced in Maximo Scheduler 7.5.1 and then rolled into core Maximo as part of Maximo 7.6.

A crew is a group of Labor and Tool Assets that work together to complete work order assignments. A crew has one or more positions with required craft and skill levels and may have a required set of tools. A crew can also have a set of qualifications that need to be fulfilled by the labor assigned to the crew. The members of the crew change over time as Labor resources take their holidays or have other periods of absence. A template for a crew is called a Crew Type, the focus for this article.

Crew Types is a template for Crews. A crew defines the labor and assets with specific craft-skill levels and qualifications needed to perform work. A crew type then is the required craft-skills, qualifications and tools that will need to be fulfilled by the members of a crew. Crew types are defined at the organization level (object AMCREWT) and the Crew Type application will be found under the Administration – Resources module.

Before starting with crew types, the positions in the crew need to be defined in the ALN domain called AMCREWPOSITION. A Position is a placeholder for a member of the crew team.

We have created our first crew type BOSOHL – Overhead Line Crew with the first crew position – DRIVER with the Craft of DRIVER. The default status is ACTIVE and is taken from the Synonym Domain CREWTSTATUS, the other status value is INACTIVE. The record is created in table AMCREWT which is defined at the OrganizationA structural element of a Maximo database which is used for data sharing and is often aligned to a legal entity of an organisation. More level with unique key AMCREWTYPE, ORGID.

The Hourly Rate is $14.50. I have navigated through to the Crafts application for the DRIVER craft and you can see that the hourly rate has been taken from the Standard Rate on the Craft record. Notice the “Crew?” field is checked (ISCREW=1) on the craft record, these will be the only crafts that can be selected on to a Crew Type or Crew record.

I have also marked the craft ELECT – Electrician as being applicable to crews.

Now I can select two more positions:

• Position LEADER with craft-skill level ELECT-FIRSTCLASS
• Position HELPER with craft-skill level ELECT-APPRENTICE

Notice that you can select a craft provided by an external vendor, or a craft where there is a Labor Rate Contract with the vendor. Once the Required Crafts record has been saved to table AMCTCRAFT it cannot be modified except to add a remark. If you wanted to change the skill level, you would need to delete the Required Craft row and create a new record. You can do this even if the Crew Type record is used on a Crew.

The Hourly Rate has increased to $52.50. Navigating through to the Crafts application you can see that the Standard Rate of the Electrician – 1^st Class is $22.00 and the Electrician – Apprentice is $16.00. The additional $38.00 is added to the standard rate for the driver of $14.50 to now provide a total hourly rate for the BOSOHL crew type of $52.50.

If the craft-skill level uses outside craft, then this is the hourly rate from the vendor and/or labor rate contract.

We have added a Required Tool to the Crew Type BOSOHL. It is only rotating tools that can be added as Required Tools, in the Crews application we issue a Tool Asset. The rotating tools need to be set at ACTIVE status for the same organization as the crew type. Non-rotating tools cannot be selected.

The Tool Sequence is added as there could be a requirement within the Crew Type for multiple occurrences of the same Tool. This record is saved to the table AMCTTOOL with a unique index of AMCREWTYPE, ORGID, TOOLSEQ.

When navigating to the Tools application for the BOSBTRUCK tool you can see that it is marked as Rotating and applicable to Crews. The status is ACTIVE at both the Item Set level as well as for Organization EAGLENA. There is a Tool Rate of $10.00 per hour. If you look towards the bottom there is also a Required Qualification BTRUCK – Bucket Truck Operator.

Navigating through to the Qualifications application, the BTRUCK qualification has the DRIVER craft set as a Required Craft and Skill Level, and BOSBTRUCK is a Tool That Requires This Qualification, this is the same record as you saw in the Required Qualifications in the Tools application.

Back on the Crew Type application the really observant of you might have noticed previously that there was a Required Qualifications record. This table window is shown collapsed and you need to use the Show Table button next to the Download button to display the record. This qualification was entered automatically because the tool BOSBTRUCK had a required qualification. When this occurs the Tool attribute will be checked, it is the only way in which it will be set, it is a read-only field.

Incidentally, if you delete the Required Tool that created one or more Required Qualifications then these will also be deleted. You cannot delete the Required Qualifications created for the Required Tool you will receive error message “BMXAT0324E – You cannot delete a qualification that is associated with a tool.”

Additional Qualifications can be added either against the Crew Type or against a particular Position of the Crew Type. As an illustration, the FIRSTAID qualification is required by any two members of the crew, the Quantity field has been set to 2. The HGV – Heavy Goods Vehicle license is required by the DRIVER position. These qualifications are held in the table AMCTQUAL with a unique index of AMCREWTYPE, ORGID, POSITION, QUALIFICATIONID, TOOL.

Navigating through to the Qualifications application, the HGV qualification has a Required Craft and Skill Level of DRIVER – FIRSTCLASS. We’ll see how this is handled on a Crew, the Position in our BOSOHL crew type only requires a DRIVER craft, not one of a particular skill level, but you will need to review this in the Crews article.

Qualifications for tools do not have a required position.

On the Qualifications application there is an action View Crew Requirements that shows the Crew Types and Crews where the qualification has been referenced as a Required Qualification. There is a similar action in the Crafts application.

On the Crew Type record, you may have noticed that when we entered a tool with a tool rate for the organization that there was no change to the Hourly Rate for the Crew Type. This is correct, you’ll see why later. The field help indicates that it should include the Tool Rates, and this is misleading.

You can use the Override Hourly Rate to provide a different rate, $70.00 in this case.

Duplicating Crew Types

The action Duplicate Crew Type duplicates the Required Craft, Required Qualifications and Required Tools, and the override hourly rate. This new crew type BOSTXL is for HV/EHV Transmission Line Crews. It’s a pity that you can’t just change the skill level of one of the Required Craft, as we do not send Electrician Apprentices on Extra High Voltage and High Voltage transmission lines.

To swap out the HELPER position from a craft-skill of ELECT-APPRENTICE to ELECT-SECONDCLASS required the Required Crafts record to be deleted and a new one created. During the deletion part of the process you receive the warning message “BMXAT0320W – If you delete this position, it is also deleted from the required qualification list and might cause the required qualification quantity to exceed the total crew quantity.” A message, which I believe is a hangover from Maximo for Utilities, there is no Crew Quantity field. I added a new FIRSTAID qualification linked to the HELPER position and it was deleted when I deleted the Required Craft record.

Notice that the Hourly Rate has increased from $52.50 to $55.50, and I have increased the Override Hourly Rate to $75.00.

Navigating to the Crafts application, the DRIVER record and action View Crew Requirements you can see that the DRIVER craft is now used with both the BOSOHL and BOSTXL Crew Types.

Making Crew Types Inactive

If a Crew Type is referenced on a Crew you will not be able to change status to make the Crew Type inactive as you will receive the error message “BMXAT0372E – You cannot change the status of a crew type to inactive because it has a crew associated with it. To inactivate the crew type, you must remove it from the crew.”

You can make the Crew Type inactive if the Crew Type is referenced on a Job Plan. However, if an inactive Crew Type is referenced on an active Job Plan and the job plan is applied to a work order, then you will receive the error messages:

• BMXAA4512E – The job plan for Job Plan CREWTST cannot be copied.
• BMXAA4191E – The value BOSTXL is not valid for Crew Type. Specify a valid value for Crew Type.

Deleting Crew Types

You cannot delete a Crew Type where there is a Crew that references it, you will receive the error message “BMXAT0371E – You cannot delete a crew type that has a crew associated with it. To delete the crew type, remove the crew from it first.”

You cannot delete a Crew Type if it is referenced on a Job Plan, you will receive the error message “BMXAT0402E – You cannot delete a crew type that has a job plan associated with it.”.

Crew Types in Maximo

On the Job Plans application, you can reference a Crew Type in the Labor tab as a resource requirement. The rate used in this example for the BOSTXL Crew Type is $75.00, which is the value from the Override Hourly Rate field on the Crew Type. If you update the Override Hourly Rate on the Crew Type to $77.00 it also updates the Rate field (PAYRATE) on the Job Plan Labor record, it is a non-persistent field and so is always being derived from the source record.

The Crew Type has a Required Tool, and this is added to the Job Plans Tools tab, with the Hourly Rate of $10.00.

The Job Plan action, View Costs shows a Total Cost of $87.00 when we require one hour of the Crew Type BOSTXL and one hour of the BOSBTRUCK tool. Hence, you do not need to include the hourly costs of the tools in the Override Hourly Rate used for the Crew Type, if you do you would effectively be doubling-up the tool part of the hourly rate.

Crew Types – Entity Diagram

As we saw in the earlier part of this article a Crew Type (AMCREWT) may have one or more Required Crafts (AMCTCRAFT), one or more Required Tools (AMCTTOOL) and one or more Required Qualification (AMCTQUAL). A crew type has a status history (AMCTSTATHIST).

A Crew Type is used on a Crew, but it can also be used on a Job Plan and a Work Order in the Planned Labor and Tools (JOBLABOR, JOBTOOL, WPLABOR, WPTOOL) and then on the work order assignments and actuals (ASSIGNMENT, LABTRANS).