What's the Best Time Tracking Method for Construction sites??? 1

[TheOfficeSlave]

What is the best time tracking method for a construction site environment?

Keep in mind the scenario:

--no computers
--must track to the minute (5 mins here, 5 mins there
will really add up at the end of the week)
--must assign type of work done within those
hours/mins.
--All foreman on the jobs have a Nextel
--All foreman currently come in to pick up the checks
for men on their job and then drop off the time
sheets for that past weeks work.
--Not only do they drop off timesheets but also packing
slips for what was delivered to site, which we sort
through at the office and track(little accuracy)


Does anyone have any brainstorming ideas on how to efficiently track time and material on a remote location as that of the construction industry???????

Please help???? Any suggestion will be added info and will be greatly appreciated? thanks. ----OfficeSlave

 

[PDQBach]

First of all ... no, "5 minutes here and 5 minutes there" will *not* really add up at the end of the week. Nobody on a construction site tracks their time that way. Nobody. The carpenters hammer and saw; the electricians pull wire and make connections; the plumbers do their thing. In the fantasy world you describe there are tasks like "run PVC pipe from sink to stack". Nobody does that. They do tasks like "Ground floor plumbing", "Basement plumbing", "Connect to city water lines", "connect to city sewers".

A project does not track time, but tracks the development of deliverables. Any information capture about time is secondary. When you hold your weekly status meetings do you ask "How much time did you spend?" or do you ask "Is the first floor framing complete?"

You are confusing payroll (number of hours while "clocked in" times the $payrate) with deliverables tracking: an experienced brickie will lay down a course far faster than a beginner; a course at ground level will be put down much faster than a course that requires adjusting scaffolding.

At the end of the day, you only care that the deliverables have been provided and that scope has been maintained.

 

[BNPMike]

Just add a new task to your plan:

...1) Buy a computer.

 

[BernardErtl]

I often see refineries and chemical plants strive to achieve a 1-1 correspondence between timesheet records and project schedules in an effort to generate detailed earned value tracking/analysis.

As PQDBach touched on, though, it never works at the detail level. Foremen/supervisors do not concern themselves with tracking time to that detailed degree. In my experience, they don't even remember more than a handful of work order/cost account codes to begin with. In my experience, EV measurements are best handled at a more summary level where the data for both timesheets and schedule progress can be rolled up with a reasonable confidence that the numbers correspond with a reasonable range of error.

I have seen one site employ a "chit system" requiring all field hands to obtain chits (not safety permits) from a safety/operations control center before they had permission to execute every detailed task in the schedule. The client tracked the time (for EV - not accounting) in this way. But, this draconian system required workers to spend at least 5-10 minutes of walking back and forth to the command center and doing paperwork for every hour of real work. I highly doubt that the benefit of the data tracking outweighed the cost of acquisition.

Bernard Ertl
eTaskMaker project planning software

 

[TheOfficeSlave]

i guess i wasnt very clear, my overall goal is to track time accurately and use those "generic/summary" coding, if possible but not necessary, for data feed back for estimating purposes.

The "15 mins. here, 15 mins there" scenerio was over a weeks period. If our men are rounding up to the nearest hour, adding 15/20 mins every day, the ending total of time added would be somewhere around 1.5 - 2 hrs @ $25/hr. over the span of 200 men.... Now, you see my problem. the idea is to be innovative enough to track time accurately with out a large burden or time wasted on keeping track of it. (right now it takes 15mins to write it down on our time sheets, not to mention the rounding effects which might occur)

I was thinking of using our nextel phones(service or WAP) to clock in, but what keeps them from clocking in while still traveling to the job site in their vehicles.

thought about a physical job clocks and punch cards...but there might not be a place to safely store the clocks(trailer, etc...) and some jobs have a very quick turnover and some men jump to 2-3 jobs each day, so this also became a problem.

Furthermore, tracking what we have recieved (materials)also becomes a problem when they are delivered to the job site. The packing slips will indicate a large pallet has 56 of oe type of material, but when i comes down to it there is only 54....the job continues and by the time the issue is noticed there is a 6 week waiting period for it and we demand it in 2 days. How do we be proactive in this situation and not so much reactive?



Does anyone have any suggestions?

 

[alexhu]

How do we be proactive in this situation and not so much reactive?

get someone to count it!

Are you sayinmg that noone checks the deliveries ?

Can I be one of your suppliers please, please please ?

Alex

 

[BernardErtl]

my overall goal is to track time accurately ... for data feed back for estimating purposes.

This is usually accomplished by work sampling studies. Baically, you get someone to watch a portion of the work as discretely as possible and record the results. Usually (but not always) some statistical analysis can be used to extrapolate the sampling results to apply against the entire project.

Bernard Ertl
eTaskMaker project planning software

 

[TheOfficeSlave]

There will always be human error. the idea is to minimize error and to monitor it more closely and rapidly to avoid scheduling problems.

it is the Foreman's responsibility to accurately take the time to count the material as it comes off the trucks but that info doesnt get tracked or relayed to the office. We have a steady handle on the select material delivered to the shop(our warehouse) b/c we have implemented a stand-alone program i developed to track/remind/predict unseen error in our material tracking efforts.

the problem is implementing/recieving/communicating that data that occurs outside of our control envirnment(the warehouse)...so that that same info from the job site is joined with the system we have in our warehouse.

currently, they count on site, and at the end of the week, they bring in the packing slips & time sheets, inturn we hand over the paychecks for all the men on that job under that foreman. then we manually input the data. trying to avoid rework and streamline our process.

"We are only as productive as our process was intended to be." - W. Edwards Deming

thanks guys for all you inputs....

 

[randall5]

OfficeSlave-

Try this product to track hours for your construction projects

http://www.exaktime.com/howitworks.asp

It is a timeclock that workers attach to a JOBOX and use to clock in and out. No timesheets.

Randy

 

[TheOfficeSlave]

Randall5,
Thanks for the input. We have actually already contacted them and currently sampling it. We have also contacted another company that uses it, for their input as well.


What is your opinion with the product and are you currently using it? If so, how big is your company and how have you addressed the financial deployment of it to your employees?

Do you have issues with theft, lost product and physical wear of the keys/product?

I have so many more questions that we have been wanting to know about this product, but I don’t want to overload you with too many question at the start. I really appreciate all your help.

Chad (Office Slave)

 

[randall5]

Chad
Can't be of much help. I have only seen the product and thought it would be helpful. We do not have a need to use it at this time.

Randy