Earned Hours
What the work you actually installed should have taken — installed quantities multiplied by your productivity norms. Compared against “burned” hours from the timesheets, it is the industry’s standard productivity measure.
Earned over burned is the ratio, and its virtue is timing: it moves before the cost report does, because the cost report is waiting on invoices and invoices arrive thirty to sixty days after the money was committed. A crew burning hours faster than it earns them is losing money today, and you can know that today.
The trap runs the other way. Burned hours come from the timesheets, so unallocated or overstated hours inflate the denominator and make your crews look slower than they were — which understates any disruption claim you later bring, and corrupts the norms you will price your next tender from.