Man-Hours per Cubic Yard: Concrete Labor Benchmarks

Every concrete sub already prices labor per yard — most just do it by feel. Man-hours per cubic yard is that feel written down: one number that says what a yard of placed, finished concrete costs you in labor, comparable across jobs, crews, and seasons. It’s the difference between “we usually do fine on flatwork” and “we place flatwork at 0.9 and this bid assumes 0.7 — someone explain.”

The math, and one distinction that matters

Man-hours per cubic yard = crew size × hours ÷ yards placed. A five-person crew, eight hours, 45 yards formed, placed, and finished: 40 man-hours ÷ 45 CY ≈ 0.9 MH/CY. That’s the whole formula. The distinction that keeps numbers comparable: a man-hour is one person for one hour; a crew-hour is the whole crew for one hour. Published tables use both, often without saying which — a “0.15 per yard” that seemed impossibly good usually turns out to be crew-hours. When a number surprises you, check the units before you check your pride.

Planning ranges by work type

Estimating references disagree more than you’d expect, because they’re averaging different crews, specs, and decades. But the ranges below are consistent with the published tables and — more importantly — with the arithmetic of real crew-days, and they’re serviceable for a sanity check on a bid:

Standard flatwork, placed and finished — commonly 0.5–1.0 MH/CY off the chute. The 45-yard crew-day above sits right in it.
Large pump-fed slab pours — often below 0.5 MH/CY, not because anyone works harder but because a boom pump puts enormous volume behind the same crew.
Footings and foundation walls — commonly 1.0–1.5 MH/CY: small volumes, lots of edges, the chute doesn’t reach everything, and a pump adds handling of its own.
Decorative and stamped work — 1.5–2.5+ MH/CY. The yards are ordinary; the surface work is not.

Placement and finishing only. Formwork is estimated per square foot of contact area and rebar per ton — neither scales with yardage, so folding them into a per-CY rate is how two bids for the same job end up an hour apart. Compare like with like.

Why your number won’t match the table

It shouldn’t. The table doesn’t know that your market broom-finishes everything, that your best finisher runs the machine like it owes him money, that the GC’s site adds ten minutes of walking to every task, or that November set times hold your finishing crew hostage until dark. Averages are where those differences go to die. The table’s job is to catch a bid that’s wildly off; it can’t price your work. Only your own trailing number does that — per work type, tracked pour after pour.

Know your own number — without a clipboard project

The reason most subs don’t have this number isn’t that the math is hard — it’s that the two inputs live in different places. The hours live in timesheets; the yards live on the pour schedule; and nobody’s spreadsheet divides one by the other unless someone remembers to. That’s the gap Planning Ops closes structurally: the daily report the foreman files posts the crew’s hours straight into time tracking — no re-keying — the pour board already carries every pour’s yardage, and Labor Productivity divides the one by the other per job, in man-hours per cubic yard — or per cubic metre for UK and Canadian workspaces. The number this guide is about simply appears, and keeps appearing, every week you work.

Bid the next job on your number

One trailing rate per work type — that’s the whole ask, and it compounds: bids you can defend, crews sized to the work, and an early-warning light when a job starts burning hours it didn’t bid. Planning Ops is built for concrete subs, veteran-owned, with a 14-day free trial and your whole crew riding free as viewers. Track Your Real Rate →

Questions concrete subs ask

What is a good man-hours per cubic yard for concrete?

There is no single good number — there is a good number for each kind of work. Straightforward flatwork placed and finished off the chute commonly lands under 1 man-hour per cubic yard; big pump-fed slab pours can run well under that because the volume is huge relative to the crew; footings and foundation walls commonly run 1 to 1.5 because the yards are small and the handwork is not; decorative and stamped work runs higher still. The genuinely good number is your own trailing average for that work type — it is the only one that includes your crews, your market, and your specs.

How do you calculate man-hours per cubic yard?

Crew size × hours worked ÷ cubic yards placed. A five-person crew that spends eight hours forming, placing, and finishing 45 yards spent 40 man-hours, so 40 ÷ 45 ≈ 0.9 man-hours per cubic yard. Track it per pour and per job, not per month — averaged across different work types the number stops meaning anything.

Do man-hours per cubic yard include formwork and rebar?

Be careful here — this is where two estimators quote the same job an hour apart. Published per-cubic-yard figures usually cover placement and finishing. Formwork is typically estimated separately per square foot of contact area, and rebar per ton, because neither scales with the yards poured. When you compare your number to anyone else’s, the first question is what theirs includes.

What is the metric version of this number?

Man-hours per cubic metre — same calculation, and one cubic metre is about 1.31 cubic yards, so a rate of 0.9 man-hours per cubic yard is roughly 1.2 per cubic metre. UK and Canadian workspaces track it natively in m³.

Is manpower productivity the same as man-hours per cubic yard?

For a concrete sub, effectively yes. Manpower productivity — or labor productivity — is the general idea: the labor a unit of work costs. Man-hours per cubic yard is the unit it’s measured in for placement and finishing; formwork and rebar carry their own units (per square foot of contact area, per ton).

How do you improve man-hours per cubic yard?

Bigger pours amortize the fixed hours — mobilization, setup, washout — across more yards, which is why the cheapest yard is usually part of the biggest pour you can safely place and finish. Beyond that: match the delivery rate to the crew so nobody stands waiting on a truck, keep the finishing crew ahead of the set instead of chasing it, and stop losing half-days to pours that get canceled late. The metric improves when the schedule does.

Man-hours per cubic yard: the number every concrete sub should know