Can’t speak for every facility but the process for developing a new staffing number for a busy center was pulling the area rep and a random FLM in to a meeting and asking them to “imagine their 90th percentile busiest day” and then going hour by hour and asking which positions would be open at that time. It was completely subjective and farcical. Facreps were coached by RVPs to jack their numbers to the fucking moon and any facility that developed a lower/even number was instructed to go back and fix it. Most facreps just tried to make it so that 85% staffed on paper was fully staffed in reality to account for the current “temporary rules” of NCEPT.
Anyway, everyone knows it’s bullshit. That’s why Cleveland center needs 100 more controllers than Atlanta center to work a million less airplanes per year. These were not data driven decisions. The people who end up in roles like NCEPT rep are the type who would struggle to put a function in a fucking spreadsheet.