General repair shops have it easy when it comes to estimating. ALLDATA, ProDemand, and the MOTOR data built into MSA tell you how many hours a job takes, you multiply by your shop rate, and you have a price. That doesn't work for performance work. No labor guide is going to tell you how long it takes to turbo a Corvette or machine an RB26 block.
Until now, the answer was to build your own. MSA has always let you create your own task list, track time on it, and use the Task Report and histograms to see your real averages and how much they vary. The Global Task List takes that a step further: a crowdsourced labor guide for performance work, shared across every shop that opts in.
How it was built
The Global Task List started from the Evo task list Kevin has refined at Evolution Dynamics over about 15 years. That list was adapted to the main platforms performance shops work on, adjusted for differences like drivetrain and forced induction. The starting times are rough estimates. The real goal is replacing those estimates with actual recorded times from shops doing the work.
Turn it on
Go to your shop settings, open Settings, and scroll to the bottom to find Global Task List. Turn it on and accept the agreement. Sharing is anonymous: your shop name is never attached, only how long the task took.
You'll also want the MSA Community Forum turned on, since that's where questions and discussion about each task live.
Browse global tasks
Open your task list and click Global Tasks in the top right. There are a lot of tasks, so the easiest way to find what you need is by list rather than scrolling or searching:
- Machine Shop: blocks and heads by engine, including 4G63, 4B11, 2JZ, LS, SR20, RB26, rotary, and more.
- General Fabrication: services that aren't tied to one car, like mini tubs, pedal box mounts, seam welding, gauge installs, transponders, post-build shakedowns, and pre-dyno inspections.
- Performance: tasks broken out by platform, such as the Evo 8/9.
Add a task to your shop
Find a task you offer and click Add to Shop. It shows up in your own task list right away, ready to use on jobs. Every time you track time on it, that time feeds the global average.
Merge with tasks you already track
If you already have your own version of a task with years of time tracked on it, you don't have to start over. Add the global version to your shop, then use Merge Duplicates to combine the two. Keep your own timing, choose the global naming, and save. Your shop's existing recorded times are now part of the global average.
Read the global task metrics
Edit any global task to see its global task metrics: how many samples have been recorded, the average time, and the standard deviation (one sigma). Your shop's own historical data sits alongside it, so you can compare your times to everyone else's. With enough samples, outliers like a job done with the differential already out average out, and you get a number you can actually price from.
Ask questions in the forum
Every global task has an Ask button. Click it and MSA creates a forum post for that task, where you can ask how others handle it, point out times that look off, or request new services and platforms. Changes discussed there can be rolled back into the Global Task List for everyone.
The more shops share, the better it gets
Even if nobody shared a single time, the task names and structure alone save a lot of setup. But the real value comes when shops track time on real jobs. If your platform is missing, let us know and we'll add it.
Watch the walkthrough above to see the Global Task List from setup to sharing.