John --
In a situation such as this, I would create a special administrative project
to capture their nonproject time. The tasks in the project should represent
some of the "putting out fires" and "body shop" types of tasks they
regularly perform. The Duration of each task should be a fairly short
period of time, such as 60 days (representing about 3 calendar months). The
Task Type for each task should be Fixed Duration and non-Effort Driven. You
should assign the resources to each task in the plan at a small number of
Units (1-5%) and then publish the project.
Ask your people to log their "real numbers" each day on the various tasks to
which they are assigned, and to submit their numbers to you at the end of
each week. After the project ends, you can then analyze how much "putting
out fires" and "body shop" work that you people realistically perform in an
average week or month. You can then use these numbers for forecasting
availability against future projects. Just a few ideas. Perhaps the others
will have some thoughts, too. Hope this helps.
--
Dale A. Howard [MVP]
Enterprise Project Trainer/Consultant
Denver, Colorado
http://www.msprojectexperts.com
"We wrote the book on Project Server"
