Masonry Magazine February 2003 Page. 36
Industry
TRENDS
the original bid. If we know that Sheet A2.3 has 1,000 blocks and was given so many man-hours to accomplish the task, all the field should have to do is track man-hours in a given location (drawing reference). Keep it simple: the field crew should track labor and anything that impacts it, including your own errors.
A very strong benefit of this type of documentation is it shows areas that were not impacted by an outside influence and how well your crews produced. This "measured mile" is the keystone of productivity and is translatable into a large number of situations. Periodically, check on productivity in given areas because this helps you compare your pre-bid expectations with what you are seeing. If any given area is seeing a large productivity loss, we can confine the analysis to that area and not have the problem lost in the project.
Once you develop a simple tracking method based on drawing references, it's a small step to actual cost claim documentation. Now you know where the labor is going. What you need to track next is how it might be impacted by any stated or new disruptions. You have the cause (the stated disruption) and the effect (what specific block of workers was impacted and where) and the damages because you know exactly how many hours were impacted.
You will be able to show that in areas which are not impacted are meeting expected productivity rates and that areas that are impacted are sustaining losses of productivity as shown by the increase in man-hours over static material counts.
It is simple to track disruptions as well. Let's say that you are a subcontractor on a mid-rise jail project. Let's assume that it's risky work under an out-of-town general contractor and an owner with a litigious reputation. When you think about documenting disruptions in the beginning of the project, ask yourself what potential problems might occur that could disrupt your project. For example you might be able to anticipate either from experience or the nature of the project these examples of potential disruptions could exist:
* Late door frames
* MEP sequencing
* Late vertical dowels
With these types of reasonably anticipated disruptions, it is possible to take the simple man-loading data being
As a mason contractor, the burden of detail is perhaps a little higher than other trades and the field crews need to rise to this occasion.
Labor Tracking
| Sheet | Grid Ref. | Man- hours | Door Frames | MEP Sequence | Vertical Dowel | Est. He Los |
| :---- | :-------- | :--------- | :---------- | :----------- | :------------- | :---------- |
| A2.1 | F5 line | 32 | X | | | 4 |
| A2.2 | H4 line | 16 | | X | X | 4 |
Still no door frames on second floor, four guys each lost an hour trying to fit wrong frames. ping error. Plumber is still holding us up on the third floor.
collected in the field and cross-reference it with these disruptions without any additional efforts on the part of the field. For instance, the man-hour tracking portion of your daily report would look like the above table.
Any time you check a disruption box, you write up a little explanation below. That's it. That's what good field tracking looks like. It doesn't take a lot of writing and editorial comment on how bad the general contractor is treating you. Collecting the cause-and-effect information is what is needed from your eyes and ears in the field.
Now, to be truly useful in a claim for additional compensation, the original estimate also has to be broken out over the drawings. Each drawing should have a breakdown of the walls included in that drawing, estimated block count and any other relevant information (ie, door frames, lintels, etc.). This information is then transferable to the project schedule and your schedule of values.
In addition, the tools are all there to identify periods of time where there may be additional risk (e.g. schedule shows walls and ducts in the same area at the same time) and to do something now that might mitigate those additional costs. After all, the goal should always be to meet or beat the bid, avoid all claims that you can avoid, and document all the events that impact your performance.
Once a week, a crew should walk the site and identify the progress of the work and, ideally, each wall. When you keep a log of these reviews, your as-built documentation is completed on a day-by-day basis without any additional effort from the field. This practice allows the project management team to identify past trends in the actual construction process that will help in making good decisions in the future, as well as identify impacting features for the change order process.
Daily project documentation is an absolute necessity in these litigious times. As a mason contractor, the burden of detail is perhaps a little higher than other trades and the field crews need to rise to this occasion. They are the eyes and ears of the company in the field and are inevitably responsible for the way a majority of the money on a give job is spent. With strong daily tracking tools, the project will be better cared for and the potential for profits as secure as possible.
Without these "best practices," you may not be able to recover the losses which you deserve simply because you can't prove what happened to you after a breach occurs.
34 Masonry
February 2003
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