Multiskilling is a workforce strategy that has been shown to reduce indirect labor costs, improve productivity, and reduce
turnover. A multiskilled workforce is one in which the workers possess a range of skills that allow them to participate in more than one
work process. In practice, they may work across craft boundaries. The success of multiskilling greatly relies on the foreman’s ability to
assign workers to appropriate tasks and to compose crews effectively. The foreman assigns tasks to workers according to their knowledge,
capabilities, and experience on former projects. This research investigated the mechanics of allocating a multiskilled workforce and
developed a linear programming model to help optimize the multiskilled workforce assignment and allocation process in a construction
project, or between the projects of one company. It is concluded that the model will be most useful in conditions where full employment
does not exist; however, it is also useful for short term allocation decisions. By running the model for various simulated scenarios,
additional observations were made. For example, it is concluded that, for a capital project, the benefits of multiskilling are marginal
beyond approximately a 20% concentration of multiskilled workers in a project workforce. Benefits to workers themselves become
marginal after acquiring competency in two or three crafts. These observations have been confirmed by field experience. Extension of this
model to allocation of multifunctional resources, such as construction equipment, should also be possible.