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In: Accounting

The WIX Company Civil Engineers consists of two divisions. The divisions are Water (WA) and Infrastructure (IF). The company sells engineering services to various customers.

 

The WIX Company Civil Engineers consists of two divisions. The divisions are Water (WA) and Infrastructure (IF). The company sells engineering services to various customers.

The following are the bill rates for the various staff classifications:
Vice President $280/hour
Senior Engineer $220/hour
Associate Engineer $200/hour
Staff Engineer $160/hour

The two divisions expect to bill the following hours:
• Water- 12,000 hours, vice president at 15% of the time, 20% of Senior Engineer time 10% to Associate engineers and remaining to Staff Engineers.
• Infrastructure- 4,000 hours, vice president at 12% of the time, 20% of Senior Engineer time, 5% to Associate engineers and remaining to Staff Engineers.

The Direct Labor costs per hours are as follows:
Vice President $99/hour
Senior Engineer $77/hour
Associate Engineer $62/hour
Staff Engineer $53/hour

The utilization (billable ratio to total hours) for each staff members are as follows:
Vice President 65%
Senior Engineer 80%
Associate Engineer 85%
Staff Engineer 92%.

The company has the following other costs:
Admin Salaries $181,000
Software $20,000
CEO Salary $150,000
Rent $125,000
Utilities $16,000
Benefits $75,000

Assume that there are 2080 hours per year that each engineer can work including vacation and other benefit hours.

You are an outside consulting firm and the company Board and the CFO have engaged you. The goal of the Board and the CFO is to improve profitability of the divisions and company. Therefore, to accomplish that the following questions should be answered during the presentation and the write up.

(1). Develop a staffing plan (FTE- Full time equivalent) based on the expected hours to be billed. This means, how many of (Full Time Equivalents) the various staff types should be there to accomplish the set goals and billable hours.

(2). Develop an Income Statement budget for the company and the two divisions. All overhead costs can be allocated using percentage of revenues.

(3). What can the company do to allocate costs differently to the divisions? Prepare a revised Income statement by division.

(4). Calculate the breakeven revenue.

(5). Make recommendations to improve profitability.

(6). If the company wants to make a profit of $3M how much revenue would it need? (Assuming all costs stay the same including labor)

I need all answers to this question, especially #6. Please help, thank you so much. I just do not understand.

Solutions

Expert Solution

5)

We can see that the profitability is affected majorly due to the Labour cost. Hence I have the following recommendations to improve profitability:

1. Increase cross skilling amongst the resources of Water and Infrastructure - This will help us the utilize the resources more efficiently and reduce the unutilized/idle time to a great extent. This can help us save on one more employee cost throughout the year and help us on cost saving to a great extent.

Suppose we need 1.5 VP in Water and 0.3 VP in Infrastructure, so we will need to hire 2 VP for Water and 1 VP for Infrastructure if there is no cross-skilling. But if we develop cross-skilling, we can hire just 1.5+0.3=1.8 i.e. 2 VP in total and save the cost of 1 VP for the entire year.

2. Utilize engineers across levels. We can utilize engineers across levels and save on the employee cost to a great extent. For eg: Say we have a requirement of 1.5 VP and 1.4 Senior Engineer. Then we don't need to hire 2 VP and 2 Senior Engineer. We can hire 2 VP and 1 Senior Engineer. The 0.4 Senior Engineer work can be done by the balance 0.5 VP (2-1.5) lying idle.

3. Other Cost reduction techniques can be applied to reduce the fixed costs of the organization. Go for an increase in Sales to utilize the idle manhours available in each Division. This will increase revenue at no additional cost (since idle manhours are utilized) and hence the profit will also increase


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