What is time-to-redeploy?

How is time-to-redeploy measured?

Two timestamps per consultant: last billable day on the previous assignment, and the date they confirm a start on the next one. The gap in working days is the measure. Take the median across a quarter, not the mean — one pathological bench case otherwise distorts the whole figure.

Nothing between those two timestamps counts as progress. A submission is not a redeployment, and neither is an interview.

What is a day of time-to-redeploy worth?

Multiply the consultant’s billable hours per day by their bill rate by your gross margin percentage. A consultant billing $65 an hour on eight-hour days at 22% gross margin carries roughly $114 of margin per idle day.

That figure only becomes material when multiplied by redeployment volume. A 40-person bench on nine-month assignments redeploys about 53 times a year, so a nine-day median is roughly $54,000 of margin a year, not $1,000.

Why not use utilization or fill rate?

Utilization is an average over a period, so it reports what already happened and hides which specific consultant is sitting. Fill rate counts roles filled rather than people redeployed, so an agency can post a healthy fill rate while its own bench rots.

Submittal counts are worse than either, because they reward activity instead of outcome.

How do you reduce it?

By removing waiting states rather than making people faster. In practice the days sit in duplicate-requirement triage, manual work-authorization re-checks, résumé reformatting, screening-call scheduling, and unchased submissions — not in sourcing.