How do you calculate technician travel time?

Divide the count of work orders needing travel by how many you can reach per travel hour to get base time, then multiply by one plus the allowance. With 84 work orders at 5.5 per hour and a 30% allowance, base time is 15.27 hours and required time is 19.85 hours.

What should the access and route allowance be?

It depends on site security and logistics. Open campuses might need 10-15%; secured plants with escorts, permits and badge-in can justify 30% or more. The example's 30% adds about 4.6 hours on top of the 15.27-hour base drive estimate.

Why separate travel time from wrench time?

Because they scale differently and hide different problems. Inflated travel time points to poor routing or site-access friction, while inflated wrench time points to job complexity. Lumping them together masks which lever - dispatch or training - actually fixes your schedule.

How do I find work orders reached per travel hour?

Take a sample of completed routes, count work orders touched, and divide by total travel hours logged. The 5.5 in the example means a technician averages a new site roughly every 11 minutes of driving - typical for a dense campus or close-clustered customer base.

What is a good travel-time ratio?

Lower travel hours per work order is better. Field-service best practice keeps travel under about a third of the working day; if required travel time approaches wrench time, you have a routing or territory-design problem worth solving before adding headcount.

Does this include the return trip?

Only if your reach-rate was measured round-trip. If your 5.5 work-orders-per-hour figure came from one-way segments, you are undercounting - re-measure using full route cycles so the base time already reflects getting back.

CMMS, EAM & Spare Parts Management calculator

Technician Travel Time Calculator

Technician Travel Time estimates the labor hours a field maintenance team burns simply getting to work orders, before any wrench is turned. Maintenance planners and dispatchers for multi-site or campus operations use it to size crews, build realistic schedules and quote external service jobs. Travel is the most under-counted line in field maintenance: a base drive estimate ignores the very real time lost to site sign-in, escorts, permits, tool pickup and detours. This calculator takes a base reach-rate and inflates it by a realistic allowance so the schedule you publish survives contact with the gate guard.

What this calculator does

Estimate technician travel time across work orders, routes, buildings, production areas, or remote service locations.
a maintenance or asset-management team needs to reduce non-wrench time, adjust routing, stage tools and parts, or justify satellite storerooms for a technician route plan
It divides the number of travel-dependent work orders by the work orders reachable per travel hour, then inflates that base time by an access-and-route allowance.

Formula used

Base technician travel time time = work orders requiring technician travel ÷ work orders reached per travel hour
Required technician travel time time = base time × allowance factor

Inputs explained

Work orders requiring technician travel:
Work orders reached per hour of travel:
Site access, escort, permit and route-variation allowance:

How to use the result

Use it when scheduling a shift of field work, sizing a mobile crew, or quoting travel labor for off-site or multi-building service contracts.
It uses an average reach-rate, so it smooths over clustering and outliers - a few remote or high-security sites can blow past the allowance even when the average holds.

Common questions

How do you calculate technician travel time? Divide the count of work orders needing travel by how many you can reach per travel hour to get base time, then multiply by one plus the allowance. With 84 work orders at 5.5 per hour and a 30% allowance, base time is 15.27 hours and required time is 19.85 hours.
What should the access and route allowance be? It depends on site security and logistics. Open campuses might need 10-15%; secured plants with escorts, permits and badge-in can justify 30% or more. The example's 30% adds about 4.6 hours on top of the 15.27-hour base drive estimate.
Why separate travel time from wrench time? Because they scale differently and hide different problems. Inflated travel time points to poor routing or site-access friction, while inflated wrench time points to job complexity. Lumping them together masks which lever - dispatch or training - actually fixes your schedule.
How do I find work orders reached per travel hour? Take a sample of completed routes, count work orders touched, and divide by total travel hours logged. The 5.5 in the example means a technician averages a new site roughly every 11 minutes of driving - typical for a dense campus or close-clustered customer base.
What is a good travel-time ratio? Lower travel hours per work order is better. Field-service best practice keeps travel under about a third of the working day; if required travel time approaches wrench time, you have a routing or territory-design problem worth solving before adding headcount.

Last reviewed 2026-05-12.