Plumbing Technician Utilization: What Is a Good Rate?
Plumbing technician utilization measures how much of a technician’s paid working time is spent on productive field-service work. ServiceTitan’s 2026 field-service guidance says utilization of 60%–80% is considered strong under its formula of time spent on field-service jobs divided by total time worked. However, narrower billable-hour calculations can produce much lower percentages, so companies must define utilization consistently before comparing results. ServiceTitan
What Is Plumbing Technician Utilization?
Technician utilization measures how effectively a plumbing company converts paid technician time into productive field activity.
A basic formula is:
Technician Utilization Rate = Productive Field-Service Hours ÷ Total Hours Worked × 100
ServiceTitan defines productive time in its field-service utilization metric as time spent on field-service jobs, including customer service activity and presenting upsell opportunities. Time lost to traffic or returning to the office for tools is treated as unproductive downtime. ServiceTitan
For example, if a technician works eight hours and spends five hours on productive field-service work:
5 ÷ 8 × 100 = 62.5% utilization
That 62.5% result is a mathematical example, not a published plumbing industry average.
What Is a Good Plumbing Technician Utilization Rate?
Under ServiceTitan’s field-service definition, 60%–80% utilization is considered strong. ServiceTitan recommends reviewing the metric monthly to identify longer-term trends in technician routing, dispatching, and productivity. ServiceTitan
That benchmark needs context.
A plumbing company should not assume that every utilization percentage found online measures the same thing. Some calculations count general productive field time, while others count only hours that can be directly billed to a customer.
That difference can produce very different utilization percentages.
Key Published Technician Utilization Data
| Metric | Published Figure | Source / Limitation |
| Strong field-service utilization | 60%–80% | ServiceTitan field-service metric |
| Billable-hour efficiency considered good | 30% | ServiceTitan labor-costing framework |
| Billable-hour efficiency considered extremely efficient | 50% | ServiceTitan labor-costing framework |
| Annual starting work hours | 2,080 | ServiceTitan calculation example |
| Annual available hours after example PTO | 1,944 | ServiceTitan calculation example |
| Annual billable hours at 30% efficiency | 583.2 | ServiceTitan calculation example |
These figures do not all represent the same definition of utilization. The 60%–80% range measures productive field-service time, while the 30%–50% figures come from ServiceTitan’s billable-labor-costing framework. ServiceTitan
That distinction is essential when benchmarking a plumbing company.
What Is the Difference Between Productive Time and Billable Time?
Productive time and billable time are related, but they are not always identical.
A technician may perform activities that help complete jobs or support customers but are not directly billed as labor.
ServiceTitan’s Contractor Playbook lists several common sources of non-billable technician time:
- Travel and fuel stops
- Free estimates
- Warranty service
- Callbacks
- Truck stocking
- Tool maintenance
- Logging mileage and parts
- Preparing invoices and estimates
ServiceTitan says that for most service companies, 30% billable-hour efficiency is considered good, while 50% would represent extremely efficient employee costing. In an eight-hour workday, those rates equal approximately 2.4 and 4 billable hours, respectively. ServiceTitan
This is why a plumbing company should not compare a 50% billable-hour efficiency figure directly with a 60%–80% productive-utilization benchmark without first checking what each calculation includes.
How Does ServiceTitan Calculate Annual Billable Hours?
ServiceTitan provides a useful labor-costing example.
It begins with:
40 hours × 52 weeks = 2,080 annual work hours
In its example, the company subtracts seven holidays and 10 paid vacation days:
17 days × 8 hours = 136 hours
That leaves:
2,080 − 136 = 1,944 available working hours
At a 30% billable-hour efficiency rate:
1,944 × 30% = 583.2 projected annual billable hours per technician
ServiceTitan uses this calculation as part of determining labor cost and profitable billable rates. ServiceTitan
It should not be interpreted as a universal prediction that every plumbing technician will produce exactly 583.2 billable hours per year. The figure is based on ServiceTitan’s stated assumptions for available hours and a 30% efficiency rate.
Why Does the Definition of Utilization Matter?
The definition matters because the numerator can change dramatically.
Consider an eight-hour shift.
One company might count:
- Time on the job
- Customer discussions
- Diagnosis
- Recommendations
- Job documentation performed onsite
Another company might count only hours directly billed to the customer.
Both may call the resulting percentage “utilization,” but they are measuring different things.
For benchmarking purposes, plumbing companies should document:
- What counts as total available time?
Does it include meetings, PTO, training, vehicle maintenance, and breaks? - What counts as productive time?
Does diagnosis count? Estimates? Jobsite paperwork? - What counts as billable time?
Is the company measuring actual billed labor or total productive job time?
Without consistent definitions, utilization comparisons can be misleading.
This is also why technician utilization should be reviewed alongside broader plumbing technician productivity benchmarks rather than judged as a standalone percentage.
Why Technician Utilization Matters
Technician labor is a limited resource. When paid field time is lost unnecessarily to poor scheduling, long travel, missing parts, callbacks, or administrative friction, the company has fewer productive hours available to generate revenue.
ServiceTitan recommends examining scheduling and dispatch when technician utilization is low and specifically points to reducing wasted time between jobs and improving communication between dispatchers and technicians. ServiceTitan
That makes utilization more than a technician-performance metric. It is also a measure of how effectively the entire plumbing company supports its field workforce.
KMF’s plumbing dispatcher metrics and benchmarks provides additional context on the office-side systems that can affect field productivity.
What Does BuildOps Data Show About Technician Productivity?
Technician utilization matters because small differences in productive field time can create large differences in output.
BuildOps’ Torque 2026 research analyzed operating data from more than 1,500 commercial specialty-trade contractors, including plumbing, HVAC/mechanical, electrical, and fire/life safety businesses. The dataset is not residential-plumbing-specific, so it should be used as commercial field-service context rather than as a universal plumbing benchmark. (buildops.com)
BuildOps reports that best-in-class contractors generate approximately 65% more revenue per technician than average contractors.
That difference is important because these companies are not necessarily adding 65% more technicians. Instead, stronger operators are getting more productive output from the field capacity they already have. (buildops.com)
How Many Work Orders Does a Technician Complete per Day?
BuildOps reports the following commercial-contractor benchmarks:
| Metric | Average Contractors | Best-in-Class Contractors |
| Work orders per technician per day | 1.16 | 1.55 |
| Difference | — | ~34% higher |
Best-in-class contractors therefore completed about 34% more work orders per technician per day in the BuildOps dataset. (buildops.com)
This does not mean every plumbing technician should complete 1.55 calls per day. Commercial jobs can differ substantially in duration, complexity, crew size, and billing structure.
The data is more useful as evidence that field workflow, scheduling, and technician capacity can materially affect production.
How Does Utilization Affect Revenue per Technician?
Utilization affects revenue per technician by determining how much available technician time becomes productive work.
A simplified relationship is:
Available Technician Hours × Productive Utilization = Productive Field Hours
Those productive hours can then generate completed jobs and revenue.
BuildOps reports approximately $207,000 in revenue per technician as a North American commercial-service benchmark in its 2026 data. It also reports that best-in-class contractors generate about 65% more revenue per technician than average performers. (buildops.com)
The $207,000 figure should not be treated as a residential plumbing benchmark. It comes from commercial specialty-trade contractors.
For plumbing companies, the important relationship is:
Utilization → Productive Capacity → Completed Work → Revenue per Technician
KMF’s revenue per plumbing technician benchmarks examines the revenue side of this equation in greater detail.
How Much Can 20 Minutes of Lost Technician Time Cost?
BuildOps provides a useful example of how small daily inefficiencies accumulate.
Using a blended billable rate of $150 per hour, BuildOps calculated that losing approximately 20 minutes of technician time per day can equal about 85 billable hours per technician per year.
For a company with 20 technicians:
85 hours × 20 technicians × $150 per hour = approximately $255,000
BuildOps presents this as an example of potential annual revenue capacity lost to technician inefficiency. (buildops.com)
This is not a plumbing-industry average.
It is a calculation based on BuildOps’ stated assumptions:
- 20 minutes lost per technician per day
- 20 technicians
- $150 blended billable rate
The example illustrates why seemingly small amounts of daily downtime can become significant when multiplied across an entire field team.
What Reduces Plumbing Technician Utilization?
Plumbing technician utilization can fall when paid field time is consumed by activities that do not move revenue-producing jobs toward completion.
Common sources include:
- Excessive travel
- Waiting for parts
- Waiting for job information
- Poor scheduling
- Dispatch gaps
- Return trips
- Callbacks
- Paperwork
- Truck stocking
- Tool maintenance
- Free estimates
- Warranty work
Not all non-billable time is unnecessary. Truck maintenance, safety checks, training, documentation, and rest are legitimate parts of operating a plumbing business.
The goal is not to eliminate every non-billable minute. It is to identify avoidable friction.
How Does Travel Time Affect Utilization?
Travel time can reduce technician utilization when routing creates unnecessary distance between jobs.
ServiceTitan specifically identifies traffic and returning to the office for forgotten tools as examples of unproductive downtime within its field-service utilization framework. (servicetitan.com)
A technician may be fully occupied for eight hours while still having relatively low productive utilization if several of those hours are spent driving.
This distinction matters:
Busy does not necessarily mean productive.
A plumbing company can have a full schedule while losing field capacity to inefficient routing.
How Does Dispatch Affect Technician Utilization?
Dispatch directly affects utilization because dispatchers determine when, where, and in what sequence technicians are sent to jobs.
Poor dispatch can create:
- Long gaps between calls
- Excessive travel
- Technicians arriving before parts are available
- Wrong technicians assigned to specialized jobs
- Missed opportunities to fill schedule gaps
ServiceTitan’s plumbing KPI guidance lists a dispatcher/service-coordinator target of at least 50% productive time booked per day dispatched. This is a dispatcher-capacity target, not the same metric as technician utilization, but it illustrates how office scheduling affects field capacity. (servicetitan.com)
KMF’s plumbing dispatcher metrics and benchmarks covers those office-side metrics separately.
How Do Callbacks Reduce Technician Utilization?
Callbacks reduce productive capacity because a technician may have to return to a completed job without creating new revenue.
That return trip can consume:
- Drive time
- Technician labor
- Parts
- Fuel
- Dispatcher capacity
- A schedule slot that could have been used for a new customer
ServiceTitan’s Contractor Playbook lists callbacks of 1% or less as a target for plumbing service and maintenance operations. (servicetitan.com)
Callbacks therefore affect both productivity and profitability.
A technician with high scheduled utilization but frequent callbacks may appear busy while producing less profitable output.
That is why utilization should never be evaluated by itself.
Should Plumbing Companies Maximize Technician Utilization?
No. Higher utilization is not automatically better if it creates overtime, rushed work, poor documentation, or more callbacks.
The goal should be productive, sustainable utilization—not filling every possible minute of a technician’s day.
ServiceTitan’s field-service guidance treats 60%–80% utilization as strong under its productive field-time definition. That does not mean 90% or 100% is necessarily better. (servicetitan.com)
A technician still needs time for:
- Travel
- Job documentation
- Truck restocking
- Tool maintenance
- Training
- Safety procedures
- Customer communication
- Unexpected job delays
Trying to eliminate all non-billable time can create new operational problems.
How Does Technician Utilization Affect Gross Profit?
Technician utilization can influence gross profit by affecting how much productive revenue a company generates from its existing field labor.
A simplified operating chain is:
Available Technician Hours × Utilization = Productive Hours
Then:
Productive Hours × Revenue Productivity = Technician Revenue
And:
Technician Revenue × Gross Margin = Gross Profit
Higher utilization can therefore increase revenue capacity without adding another technician.
But utilization alone does not guarantee stronger gross profit.
A technician can be highly utilized while working on low-margin jobs, using excessive materials, generating overtime, or creating callbacks.
That is why utilization should be reviewed together with plumbing gross margin benchmarks and revenue per technician.
Should Residential and Commercial Plumbing Companies Use the Same Utilization Benchmark?
Not necessarily.
Residential service and commercial plumbing can operate very differently.
Residential service technicians may complete several individual calls per day. Commercial technicians may spend much longer on a single job, project, or account.
Differences can include:
- Job duration
- Crew size
- Travel patterns
- Material requirements
- Customer approval processes
- Billing methods
- Scheduled maintenance work
- Project-based work
For that reason, plumbing companies should compare utilization within similar departments before comparing themselves with a broad outside benchmark.
KMF’s guides to residential vs. commercial plumbing companies and service vs. new construction plumbing companies provide additional context on these operating differences.
How Should Plumbing Companies Track Technician Utilization?
Plumbing companies should first create a consistent definition of available time and productive time.
At minimum, track:
Available Hours
The paid hours available for field work after applying the company’s chosen rules for PTO, holidays, training, meetings, and other excluded time.
Productive Hours
Time spent performing the field activities the company defines as productive.
Billable Hours
Hours directly charged to customers, if the company tracks billable efficiency separately.
Utilization Rate
Productive Hours ÷ Available Hours × 100
The company should then review utilization by:
- Technician
- Department
- Location
- Service type
- Week
- Month
- Trailing 12 months
A company should avoid changing the definition from month to month. Consistency is what makes the KPI useful.
What Other KPIs Should Be Reviewed With Utilization?
Technician utilization works best as part of a larger operating scorecard.
Important related KPIs include:
- Revenue per technician
- Jobs completed per technician
- Average ticket
- Callback rate
- Gross margin
- Labor cost
- Drive time
- Overtime
- First-time completion
- Gross profit per technician
KMF’s plumbing business KPIs provides a broader framework for monitoring plumbing-company performance.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is plumbing technician utilization?
Plumbing technician utilization measures the percentage of available working time spent on productive field-service activity.
A common formula is:
Productive Field Hours ÷ Total Available Hours × 100
What is a good plumbing technician utilization rate?
ServiceTitan’s field-service guidance says 60%–80% is considered strong under its productive field-service utilization definition. (servicetitan.com)
Companies should confirm that their own formula measures the same type of time before making comparisons.
Is utilization the same as billable efficiency?
No.
Utilization may include productive field activity that is not billed directly to the customer.
Billable efficiency usually measures a narrower percentage of available technician hours that are actually billed.
That is why ServiceTitan’s billable-hour examples can produce lower percentages than its broader utilization guidance.
Does travel time count against technician utilization?
Under ServiceTitan’s field-service definition, time lost to traffic can count as unproductive downtime. (servicetitan.com)
Each plumbing company should document how travel is treated in its own KPI calculation.
Do callbacks reduce technician utilization?
Callbacks can reduce productive capacity because they consume technician time that might otherwise be used for new revenue-producing work.
They can also increase direct labor, travel, parts, and scheduling costs.
Can technician utilization be too high?
Yes.
Very high utilization can become counterproductive if technicians are rushed, overtime increases, job quality declines, or callbacks rise.
The objective is profitable and sustainable utilization, not simply the highest possible percentage.
How does utilization affect revenue per technician?
Higher productive utilization can increase revenue per technician because more paid field time is converted into completed work.
However, average ticket, close rate, job mix, pricing, and technician skill also influence revenue production.
How often should technician utilization be reviewed?
Monthly reporting is useful for identifying operational trends, while weekly reporting can help managers identify immediate dispatch or scheduling problems.
Longer trailing-period views can help reduce the effect of seasonality.
Final Takeaway
Plumbing technician utilization measures how effectively a company converts available technician time into productive field activity.
ServiceTitan currently describes 60%–80% as strong utilization under its field-service definition, while its narrower billable-hour framework uses lower percentages. Those benchmarks should not be combined without understanding what each formula measures.
The most useful approach is to define utilization consistently and track it alongside revenue per technician, average ticket, callbacks, labor cost, gross margin, and technician productivity.
Utilization is not about keeping technicians busy every minute. It is about reducing avoidable downtime and converting field capacity into profitable, high-quality work.
For additional operating benchmarks, see KMF’s plumbing business owner resources.