Tanner Engineering Consultants is a firm of professional civil engineers. It mostly does surveying jobs for the heavy construction industry throughout Texas. The firm obtains its jobs by giving fixed-price quotations, so profitability depends on the ability to predict the time required for the various subtasks on the job. (This situation is similar to that in the auditing profession, where times are budgeted for such audit steps as reconciling cash and confirming accounts receivable.)

A client may be served by various professional staff members who hold positions in the hierarchy from partners to managers to senior engineers to assistants. In addition, there are secretaries and other employees.

Tanner Engineering has the following budget for 20X1:

Compensation of professional staff …… $3,000,000

Other costs ………………………………… 937,500

Total budgeted costs …………………. $3,937,500

Each professional staff member must submit a weekly time report, which is used for charging hours to a client job-order record. The time report has seven columns, one for each day of the week.

Its rows are as follows:

● Chargeable hours

Client Job #156

Client Job #183 etc.

● Non-chargeable hours

Attending seminar on new equipment

Unassigned time etc.

In turn, these time reports are used for charging hours and costs to the client job-order records. The managing partner regards these job records as absolutely essential for measuring the profitability of various jobs and for providing an “experience base for improving predictions on future jobs.”

1. This firm applies overhead to jobs at a budgeted percentage of the professional compensation charged directly to the job (“direct labor”). For all categories of professional personnel, chargeable hours average 75% of available hours. Nonchargeable hours are regarded as additional over-head. What is the overhead rate as a percentage of “direct labor,” the chargeable professional compensation cost?

2. A senior engineer works 48 weeks per year, 40 hours per week. His compensation is $99,840.

He has worked on two jobs during the past week, devoting 24 hours to Job 156 and 16 hours to Job 183. How much cost should be charged to Job 156 because of his work there?