Flat rate labour hours refer to an adopted standard for the expected time to complete a maintenance task or set of tasks. They are used to manage times or costs associated with repairs and scheduled servicing by both in-house and outsourced maintenance teams.

Why are flat rates important?

Flat rates are a management tool to enable fleet managers to ensure that tasks are being undertaken within agreed  benchmarks.

Maintenance flat rates are an excellent benchmark for internal workshops and are crucial for cost controls with external service providers. Any service level agreement covering flat rates must include rate and time factors to complete the task while providing a specific quality of service. Once established, labour flat rates can be used for budgeting annual mechanical resources for maintaining the fleet.

How are flat rates established?

Service books supplied by manufacturers normally have flat rates supplied for every service.  Automobile associations also normally have excellent guidelines for flat rate establishment.

For in-house workshops, flat rates should be instituted by the workshop supervisor in consultation with the mechanics based on a schedule of tasks to be completed. While the concept will be the same the established flat rates for local government may differ to the private sector and as they could include additional tasks to the industry standard.