Cost codes that field staff can actually use
The payroll clerk calls on Monday: a third of last week's hours on the warehouse job were coded to "general labour". The foremen had a list of 140 codes, several nearly identical, and picked the one they could find. Now nobody can tell whether the footings or the slab used those hours.
A code list built for accounting is too long and too fine for the field. Faced with dozens of similar choices, a foreman picks a catch-all, and the data looks precise but cannot be trusted. A code list is only complete when each code has a definition of what goes in it; a field list also has to be short, use site words and match how the labour was estimated, so that hours can be compared with the budget.
Designing the field list
- Start from the labour estimate: one field code for each activity with its own labour budget. If the estimate did not split two activities, do not ask the field to.
- Keep the working list short: the codes a crew needs this month fit on one card, and the office keeps the rest.
- Name each code in site words, such as "Footings: form and strip", and let the office map each name to its own numbering.
- Write a one-line definition of what each code includes and excludes; for example, whether edge forms belong to the slab or to formwork.
- Give separate codes to what you need to see separately: each change order or time and material (T&M) ticket, standby time and rework.
- Allow a general code only with a written rule for what it covers, and review its hours every week.
- Check the first week's timesheets with each foreman, and fix misunderstandings before they become habits.
Common mistakes
- Issuing the office's full code list to the field.
- Codes that differ only by a digit or a letter.
- No code for extra work, so T&M hours vanish into base work.
- Correcting codes in the office without telling the foreman why.
Checklist
Before you issue a code list
- Each base-work code matches a line in the labour estimate
- This month's codes fit on one card
- Every code has a plain name and a one-line definition
- Change orders, standby and rework have their own codes
- Any general code has a written rule
- First week's timesheets reviewed with each foreman
Check your understanding
A foreman codes a day of patching damaged slab edges to "slab on grade". What is lost?
