Notes tagged
site
23 notes on site. All notes.
The site and the head office are looking at different numbers
The site records what physically happened and the office records what was ordered and paid. They diverge for structural reasons, not because anyone is lying.
Reported progress and real progress
The percentage in a weekly report is a judgement made by the person who will be blamed if it is low. Quantities and binary milestones survive that pressure.
Why a lorry surprises the gate
The office knows a load is coming and the man at the barrier does not. What the gate needs before a vehicle arrives, and what goes wrong when it has nothing.
A snag list that actually closes
Most snag lists never close because a snag has no identity, no owner and no closure test. What a list needs if it is to shrink instead of being reissued.
What belongs in a handover file
The handover file is assembled at the end, which is why it is always incomplete. What belongs in it, why each item is needed later, and the habit that fixes it.
One project, many contractors, and the gaps between them
A project split across trades loses most of its time in the handovers between them, not inside any one of them. Where the boundary fails, and what fixes it.
What a site engineer should record, and what they should not
The site engineer witnesses most of what happens on a project. Here is what of that must survive in writing, and what should never enter the record.
Paying a labour contractor
Attendance, measured work, advances and recoveries. How labour contract payments actually run on an Indian site, and where both sides end up cheated.
How to read a bill of quantities
A BOQ is a priced list of the work, written so that two people can compete on the same job. Reading one well is mostly knowing what it deliberately leaves out.
The concrete cube test, and the four weeks you wait
Cubes are cast on site, cured, crushed and recorded. Most of what goes wrong with the test happens in the first ten minutes, long before the crushing.
The slump test, and why water is the real argument
Slump measures how far fresh concrete settles when its mould is lifted. It takes two minutes, and it is the only check between you and a weaker structure.
Running a site store so the numbers survive
A site store is a warehouse run in mud by one person under pressure. Four disciplines keep its numbers usable; everything else is a matter of preference.
Wastage on site: allowance, loss and arithmetic
Wastage is the difference between what you bought and what ended up in the structure. Most of it is not waste. Almost none of it is measured properly.
The bar bending schedule, and steel by weight
A BBS turns drawings into a cutting list and a weight. The arithmetic is simple and the errors are systematic, which is what makes them worth understanding.
Running account bills, and what "running" means
An RA bill is cumulative. Each one restates the whole job to date and subtracts what was already certified, which is why the arithmetic confuses everyone.
Why tasks stall between people
Work rarely stops because somebody refused. It stops in the handover, where one person has finished and the next has not been told they are now waiting on.
What makes a handover fail
A handover fails when knowledge that lived in one person's head was never written down, and nobody discovers which knowledge that was until it is needed.
A gate register somebody will actually keep
The gate is the only place every lorry passes. Most gate registers fail for design reasons, not discipline ones — they were built for a desk, not a barrier.
Attendance on a site with no signal
An attendance system that needs a network will be wrong on exactly the days it matters. Queueing punches is easy; the rules that keep the data honest are not.
The daily progress report nobody reads
Most DPRs are written by somebody who gains nothing from writing them, for somebody who does not read them. There is a version that survives that fact.
Escalation without shame
Most escalation systems require somebody to name a colleague. That is why they go unused, and why problems reach management only after they are unfixable.
Work slips before it is late
By the time a task is overdue, the decision that made it late was taken weeks earlier. The signals were all present and none of them were being counted.
Who is allowed to decide what
Most permission systems answer "what may this person see". The harder question is what they may decide, and organisations usually cannot state their own answer.