How to find £10K hidden in your site records every month!

Do you want to find an extra £10,000 or maybe even more on your project every single month? Not down the back of the sofa, but for a tried and tested method of reviewing your site records? Well, I'm Will Doyle, Chartqs and founder of Gather. Over the next 10 minutes, I'm going to show you exactly how to capture and review those records every single day to make you at least 10k extra on each project every month, just using 10 minutes of your day, maybe even over a brick. So what am I talking about? I'm talking about construction records, site diaries, allocation sheets. You've all seen them. You're probably using paper records and Excel system email, or maybe you're even using a system like Gavin. Well, regardless of that, I'm going to show you some tried and tested tips that I've learned over the last 10 years, how to use those records to extract genuine value on a project. I think when I wrote this, the notes kind of put this together, the 10k might be a little bit low, so I'd love to work through this with you and then we can start to discuss exactly how we can extract that value from your shift records or your site diaries. So there is a checklist that will go with this kind of video. So have a look at that. It'll be in the link to wherever you're watching this. But we'll work through some basic steps. So step one, get your record, find your records. It might be in a system like Gavin. Email delivered directly to you might be in Excel email, it might be in your document control system, it might be in paper. I'm not going to criticize how people do that today. I just want to make sure you've got your record. So you've got your record. Let's review it. So bonus points, really, if you're reviewing it in person with the person that wrote it, ideally on site or inside cabin, doing it the next day or the next working day after that shift. That is the most valuable point. That's when we can start to discuss it, we can start to understand it, we can amend it. So what I'm going to do, you pick up your records, you've got it in front of you on the screen, however you need to review it. Is it complete? Have you got one? That was always half the battle when I was working for a contractor. Are all the fields complete? Are all the boxes there? Is it legible? Can I actually understand what's there? It's not kind of got a big coffee stain down the middle or missing things. So if any of those things are missing, if you've not got one, go and get one, send it back, get a proper record. So that is where we need to be. Have we got a proper record for every single shift on every single project, every single day? Real basic stuff, but really important. Cool. So you've sat down with the person, that's for the record. And we're going to go through. So I always start with the weather. Why? Well, we're usually on site. We know what's happened yesterday. We can see. Right? Is it right? Is the weather about right? Was it windy? Was it cold? Was it too cold? Was it too hot? Was what was happening on site? Was it flooded? I'm not asking you to go and look at the Met Office. I'm not asking you to go and start understanding the nearest weather station that was wrote in your contract. I just want to understand what was happening on site so I can start to understand all the things that we're going to review in a minute. If the weather's not there, go right on, put that weather on. You can take a look on the Met Office website and put your postcode on your site and add it on. Get that weather or Met, because it's really important. Okay, so we've got a record, we've got the weather. What happens next? Well, I always start with the access. So it doesn't matter if you work on a high rise or you work on a complex infrastructure project. You're usually limited on how you can get to site or where you can work on site for whatever reason. So is there another party in the way? Are you getting a road closure? Are you getting a possession, whatever that might be? You need to understand when you meant to start work. When did you actually start work and why was it different? So did we meant to start work at 7:30? I'm talking about work, not time we got to site, what time we actually meant to start work on the coal face. Did we start at 8:00'? Clock? Not that 7:30. Why was it different? So plan versus actual is a key component here. There might be a reason why you can't get to site. That might be your risk, it might be your employer's risk, it might be the contractor you're working for's risk. We need to understand that. So we couldn't get to site because of X, Y and Z. We need to put that into the right bucket, give us the anecdotal reason, make sure that is on your shift record, but also put that into the right Bucket. So if you're using NEC, call 60.1 be the way I'll be heading right now and making sure we understand which bucket potential compensation event I'm talking about. Now that you need to think about. If you're doing something a bit more complex, a road closure possession where there's multiple steps, you, you need all of those steps making sure what time you're meant to get the first of those steps that might be getting the possession, you might put your machines onto the infrastructure, you might be actually starting work. And you also need to know your contract. So I would make sure you've got a copy of your contract or if you know it inside out with you, what specified is it the working time, is it the when you're going to get those different steps, what is it? And always benchmark back to that. The site manager, the foreman, whoever's filled this in will have a great idea of that. But they might have just done what they've agreed with their counterpart in your customer organization. You need to compare this against your contract. So if I was going to put a number against that and I would do that on each of these steps, I'm probably saying these is probably three to five grand. It probably is more. If you're working on a big infrastructure project where you're spending 15, 20 grand a shift, you can make back that theoretical 10 grand. I kind of promise at the start in just one of these events. Okay, so we got a record, we know where we're working, we got the weather, we know the access constraints. Now who's doing the work. So labour, plant, materials, people, equipment and materials. If you're at nec, we understand exactly who is on site. So let's start with labour or people. I would recommend you capture as a minimum three things. The person's name, the role they're undertaking and the supplier. So people might just say I want three of this skill or three of this trade. That is okay. But it really does limit you in the future when you're looking at maybe application of payments from your subcontractor, your supplier depends on those contract forms. But that's the three things that I would recommend. On top of that, if you want a bit of a bonus, I would also start looking at the start time and the end time of that particular resource. Did they start at lunchtime? They start at 7 o'. Clock. Usually the same as the shift time, but maybe different. And that kind of nuanced to sometimes save you a few pounds in there and making sure you get that right, especially when you're doing lots of obligations, payment similar if not the same for plant or equipment. So as a minimum I would recommend on each record you have the supplier, the type of plant and that just mean excavator mate. I want to know exactly what type of excavator that is, how many you've got. So I want to break it down to that level of detail that's going to have a rate against it. You're going to be able to use that information in a minute. Or when you start to look at potential lost time issues or non productivity material. Again, simple things. Supplier, type of material, what it was, quantity and unit of measure. Make sure that unit measure there is so on 100 of x 100 meters cubed. Is it under ton, what is it? So that context really matters. Okay, getting this right, managing your supply chain, managing cost is probably going to save you a couple of grand, maybe even more depend on the size of your budget. But I'm going to put 2k in terms of the maths here. So we've got three and two so far. So I've got another five grand to save across the month. Again that number is probably quite low. Okay, let's move on to the works. What we actually doing that day. I call this the workload. Can use it in using gather, you can just call this the activities, whatever's appropriate. So again as a minimum, I'm expecting to capture the location, the discipline, the activity, what we plan to do, what we actually did and the unit measure on top of that. We need some more detail. But let's just go through those things. So let's line it with your bill of quantities, let's line it up your program. Again bonus points if you line this up with your standard method of measurement or your application of payment. All of those things is where we need to be. But we want to know exactly where we're working. We're working out this structure on this room, this particular place, on our site. What do we do? Make sure that activity is clear. It's not just install containment. Well, what containment, what was it? What type? That's level of detail. We need to have the unit and measure linked to the activity. I would send back. Maybe not do it the first time, but I'd give the feedback. When we're talking about a second, I would send back anything that says percentage. Percentage is a horrible way to measure things. It's subjective and it's difficult for other people to interpret subjective means, isn't it? So we want something that is objective so meters. Meters squared. Meters cubed. I'll link to a separate article on this where you can help. And they have a quiz to put it together for your project. But you want to make it so anyone on this site, you and your site manager, you and your project manager, whoever it needs to be, can measure it in exactly the same way. Percentage is difficult because is it 100% of today? It's 100% of the whole thing. Is it what happens when you get an extra bit of work? Is that an extra 20% or is that now the new 100%? It's just not the way to be. So let's kind of get rid of those percentages. So let's say we've got planned 100 meters of this containment. To use this theoretical example. When it's different, I need to know why. So I want to capture the plant. And this plant should be a program, not what we think is the right thing to do. What is it we're saying in program? We're doing 100 meters. We're doing eight numbers of this every day. When it's different, I need to know why. So plan 100 meters. Done. 50 meters. This is where we need to know why. This is the bit that really matters. Give us the anecdotal bit, give us the story. Why can't we do this? Why can't we install that over 50 meters? Once you've done that and me. People use speech to text. We use speech to text to gather. Get people to write into their phone book. Just scroll down, write down an email, do whatever you want, tell us the story. Once you've done that, we can start to categorize it again. It depends on your contracts. And please check your Z clauses, any amendments. But typical clause 60.1 of a NEC form of contract would be where I would be here putting things into the right buckets. Some of them will be your risks. Humility is really important here. Making sure you. When you've messed up, you've not done things, you have the right people inside the right plan. You show that a lot of them will be not your risks. Ground conditions might be a good example. Things that may be provided by third parties. Make sure you start to categorize every single variance in accordance with your contract. This is where you will make your money. On top of that, I'd be encouraging your site manager, your foreman. Put this together to give me times. What time do we start the activity? Time we finish the activity, when do we stop for that particular event? There was an uncharted cable in the excavation, whatever that needs to be read, the timeline of those events. We need photos that go without any narrative. Again, a digital system obviously happens here, but you can do all this in paper. I'm not saying that this has to be in Gather or any other system. You can do all this in paper or in Excel. You can write all these things down when they happen. That timeline is where you really make the money. You can say we stopped here at 10 o', clock, two hours while we're waiting for this event to happen or this thing's provided, that is where you can start to quantify that non productive time. These will often result in conversation, events or changes, claims, whatever they're calling your type of contract. And we'll start to use this data to quantify that. So just to recap, proper location, proper activity description, proper unit of measure, a plan with statue and the currency program. And explain why I'm going to probably say that's three grand only because I need to name a few more thousand pounds to get to 1015. That is where you're going to save the most amount of money. Understanding what you plan to do as you actually do will save you thousands of pounds every month. And then you can start to use that to substantiate change. That is where you will make your money. When we do not get things that we said we were going to do, you might not claim for every event. There's a little bit of a balance in act here. We're not. It's not about smashing the contractor or the the employer or the customer. This is about understanding your data and what you're getting in the contract. Okay, two more steps really before we can summarize. Next step is look at the comments. General commentary is where I always go to. My colleague Amelia says this is where people spill the tea. That's where people just rant and give you the context of what's happened that day. This is where we ask supervisors to give us the commentary. So tell us what happened. What was the story, this happened, that happened. You'll often find little things here that are not picked up on the activities, not picked up in the resource, not picked up in the access constraints. But there's the narrative that brings it all together that allows you to understand that that was where I often find when reviewing records gives you those golden nuggets. So I'm going to say that's another thousand pounds by just reviewing that narrative, that story from the supervisor. Okay, so to get us to the final one really is the Allocation sheet. This has to be part of your site diary. Has to be together those two documents, the site diary and allocation traditionally separate. But bring them together well, you're unstoppable at that point. This is where we allocate resource usually down to within half an hour, maybe even an hour on what they were doing each day. The most important thing here is short term substantiation. What was that person doing? That meant that they couldn't do what they were meant to be doing is what I'm talking about. So we were stood down for an hour for a number of times due to this issue. Going back to those activities before we might have an uncharted cable something that was not provided in accordance to the program. We need to know the resource expended against not doing anything, not just the things they were doing. Give us the non productive time. And this is not an opportunity to bash your supervisor who's probably still sat opposite you while we're doing this review over the head saying why were the guys not very productive today? This is an opportunity to understand exactly what happened on site. I'm not being judgmental. We're not saying she's done things differently. When you're selling exactly where that result is done, do the same for labor and plant reallocate by hours. If you're feeling really advanced, you can do the same for material. We use 300 meters on this or we use 100 ton on that. That would be probably a little bit more advanced, but yeah, still provides a lot of value. Again, that is where you round up to get to that 10k. Again I think that might be low but I'm not going to change the title of this video at this point. Okay. And then probably the most important point, I'd like to stress the things I've learned the most over the last probably 10 years of just looking at records is feedback. Don't just be that horrible curious that I was that would ring up the phone to psych my literature when something had gone wrong. Where's this? Why is there no photos? Where's the record that goes with this conversation Event that I've risen but not written and I'm not giving you. Don't be that person. Do this daily review. Set up teacher, review the records and give feedback. Give constructive feedback. Start with a positive. Always start with positive. Thank you is where I always start. Thank you for giving this record. This has enabled me to do X, Y or Z. This has saved the company this much money. This has allowed us to claim for an extra £10,000 of change on this particular event. All the other stuff, missing photos hasn't quite filled in all these things. They will all come if you give positive feedback. And that's going to be the final big thing in green, probably on the checklist, which I'll share with you. But make sure every single day you give feedback to your site manager. Constructive feedback that starts with thank you. So thank you for watching this introduction to how we can review records. I would be silly to not tell you about Gather. Gather allows you to automate this. You have this data in front of you every single day in your inbox@take AO. But you can do this on paper. You can do this yourself. You can start to add value straight away on your project. Have a look at the checklist, give me some feedback and let me know how much money you say. Thank you.