The evening phone round
At six in the evening your contracts manager is on the phone. The drainage gang on the north site needs a second labourer tomorrow. The 13-tonner needs to move to the east site, which means booking the low-loader. One operator has a hospital appointment. The main contractor on the town centre job wants a gang back for a day to form a pit. By the time it is all sorted, it is eight o'clock and at least one ganger has not been told.
At six the next morning, the calls start again when a van breaks down or a delivery is cancelled.
Why allocation lives in one head
A groundworks firm's resources are people and machines that move between sites every few days. The plan is a jigsaw that changes daily, and the only complete picture is in the contracts manager's head, sometimes with a whiteboard in the yard. When they are off, nobody else can do it well.
- Gangs, operators and machines are allocated by phone.
- There is no single view of who and what is where tomorrow.
- Holidays, sickness and appointments are remembered, not recorded.
- Machine moves need low-loader bookings that are arranged separately.
- Where people actually worked is not recorded, so costing guesses.
What phone-based allocation costs
Evenings and early mornings of the contracts manager's life, every week. Gangs arriving at the wrong site or without the machine they need. Machines idle on one site while another waits. Main contractors let down when promised gangs do not show. And job costs that assume people were where they were planned to be, not where they went.
The allocation board we build
- Every gang, operative, operator and machine is listed, with skills such as pipe layer, machine tickets held and trades.
- Sites are listed with what they need each day, taken from the programme, the lookahead or the contracts manager's plan.
- The board shows people and machines against sites by day, with drag-and-drop changes on a laptop or tablet.
- Clashes are flagged: a person in two places, a machine with no transport booked, a site with no gang, an operator allocated to a machine they are not recorded as trained on.
- Holidays, sickness and appointments are entered once and shown as unavailable.
- Each evening, gangers and operators get a text with tomorrow's site, start time and any notes. Changes in the morning go out the same way.
- Gangers confirm arrival on a phone, so the record of where people actually worked feeds job costing and payroll.
| Tomorrow | North site | East site | Town centre |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gangs | Drainage gang, plus one labourer | Foundation gang | Formwork gang, one day |
| Machines | 8t excavator, dumper | 13t excavator, arriving by low-loader | Mini digger |
| Flags | None | Low-loader booked for 7:00 | Main contractor confirmed |
Who does what is still your contracts manager's decision. The board shows the jigsaw and catches clashes before they happen.
Evenings back, mornings calmer
The contracts manager plans on a screen rather than on the phone, and the plan goes out to everyone with one click. Clashes are caught before they cost a morning. Someone else can cover when the contracts manager is off, because the plan is not in one head. And where people and machines actually worked is recorded, which makes job costs honest.
Gangers get something too: tomorrow's site in writing the evening before, not a call during their tea.
Is your gang planning done by phone?
- Gangs and machines are allocated by phone each evening.
- Only one person knows the full plan.
- Gangs have turned up at the wrong site or without a machine.
- Machine moves clash with low-loader availability.
- Job costs assume people were where they were planned to be.