Field Production
Your electricians worked all day.
What did they actually accomplish?
A timecard can tell you who worked.
It can tell you where they worked.
It can tell you how many hours you paid for.
But that’s not the same as knowing what those hours produced.
Eight hours is a measure of time.
Not a measure of production.
Two electricians can each work eight hours.
One may accomplish exactly what you expected.
Another may accomplish more.
Another may accomplish less.
The timecard still says:
8 hours.
That’s useful for payroll.
But if you’re trying to understand what the job is actually costing you, there’s another question:
What happened to the work during those eight hours?
You already estimated the work.
That gave you an expectation.
When you bid the job, you made assumptions.
You expected particular work to require particular amounts of labor.
Maybe you expected a floor to rough in within a certain number of hours.
Maybe an assembly carried an expected labor amount.
Maybe you expected a particular phase of the project to consume a certain portion of the labor budget.
However you arrived at it, your price was built on an expectation.
The job eventually tells you whether that expectation was right.
Hours only become meaningful when you know what they produced.
Suppose you’ve used 500 of the 1,000 labor hours you estimated for a job.
Are you doing well?
You can’t tell from the hours alone.
If 60% of the expected work is complete:
You’re ahead.
If 50% is complete:
You’re roughly where you expected to be.
If 35% is complete:
Something deserves attention.
Hours tell you what you’ve spent.
Production helps tell you what you got for it.
Falling behind isn’t the only thing worth noticing.
What if you’re ahead?
Suppose a crew consistently completes certain work in fewer hours than you expected.
That’s good.
But it also creates a valuable question:
Why?
Is it the foreman?
The crew?
Better planning?
Better staging?
A different installation method?
Prefab?
Better coordination with other trades?
A labor assumption that was too generous?
Something particular about the job?
Something went better than expected.
Understanding why may help you do it again.
Something is behind?
Find out why. Correct it.
Something is ahead?
Find out why. Reinforce it.
The purpose isn’t to punish someone because a number turned red.
And it isn’t to congratulate someone because a number turned green.
The useful information is the difference between what you expected and what actually happened.
Then comes the important question:
Why?
A negative difference may reveal something you can improve.
A positive difference may reveal something worth repeating.
Both can teach you how your company actually produces work.
This isn’t about watching electricians.
It’s about understanding production.
Knowing that an electrician arrived at 7:03 AM doesn’t tell you whether the job is performing well.
Knowing his GPS location all afternoon doesn’t tell you whether the labor assumption in your estimate was right.
Knowing that somebody was “busy” doesn’t tell you what was produced.
MEPTrax’s direction isn’t to turn the owner into a full-time employee monitor.
The important relationship is between the labor you expected, the labor you used, and the work that actually got done.
And the electrician shouldn’t need another office job.
This matters from the other side too.
If understanding production requires electricians to spend half their day filling out forms, you’ve created another cost.
The people in the field are there to produce electrical work.
Field information should be captured as naturally and simply as practical from the work they’re already doing.
Software should help reveal production — not get in its way.
Don’t wait until you’ve spent all the labor to discover you’re running out of it.
Suppose you estimated 2,000 hours.
At the end of the job, you discover it actually took 2,500.
That’s valuable information for the next estimate.
But for this job?
Those 500 hours are already gone.
Now imagine recognizing the departure when you’ve spent 700 hours.
The question changes from:
What happened?
to:
What is happening?
And that creates the possibility of another question:
Is there anything we can do about it?
A departure doesn’t automatically mean the crew is the problem.
This is important.
Suppose production appears to be falling behind expectation.
Why?
Maybe the original labor estimate was wrong.
Maybe material arrived late.
Maybe the crew couldn’t get access to the work.
Maybe another trade was in the way.
Maybe the plans were wrong.
Maybe work had to be redone.
Maybe the customer changed something.
Maybe the crew was asked to perform work that wasn’t in the original estimate.
Before you decide what to fix, you need to understand what changed.
What if the work itself changed?
The crew may have worked exactly as it should.
But the job they are building today may no longer be the job you originally priced.
A wall moved.
Fixtures changed.
The GC asked for something extra.
Work was demolished and rebuilt.
Someone gave a field direction.
A condition nobody expected was discovered.
Now your original expectation and today’s reality are different.
Did your price change with the work?
That’s not simply a production question anymore.
It’s a change question.
Field information shouldn’t live by itself.
The field is where the estimate meets reality.
The office expected something.
The field produces something.
Material gets consumed.
Conditions are discovered.
Changes occur.
Decisions are made.
Labor gets spent.
Those things affect each other.
If the field information lives in one system and the estimate lives somewhere else, you may know both facts without understanding the relationship between them.
That’s the larger problem MEPTrax is being built to address.
Your questions don’t stop at the field report.
You discover that labor is exceeding expectation.
Why?
You discover that the scope changed.
Was it documented?
It was documented.
Was it approved?
It was approved.
Was the price right?
The work was performed.
Did we bill it?
We billed it.
Did we collect it?
And finally:
What did we actually make?
One production question just traveled through the rest of the business.
That’s Operational Awareness.
Learn about Operational Awareness →
What happens in the field should improve what happens in the office.
Suppose your company repeatedly estimates a particular assembly at 10 labor hours.
Your crews consistently install it in 8.
That’s useful.
Perhaps you have a competitive advantage.
Perhaps the estimate should change.
Perhaps you’ve discovered a production method worth reinforcing.
Now reverse it.
You estimate 10.
Reality repeatedly says 13.
That’s useful too.
Maybe the estimate needs to change.
Maybe production needs to change.
Maybe both.
The point is to stop throwing away what reality teaches you.
What actually happened should help improve what you expect next time.
MEPTrax is being built to connect expectation with production.
Field Production capabilities are COMING SOON.
MEPTrax is being developed toward field capabilities that connect work performed and labor used back to what was expected.
The objective is not simply another timecard or daily-report system.
The objective is to understand how the job is actually performing while it is being built.
See what we’re building with MEPTrax →
But MEPTrax starts before the field.
It starts with Takeoff.
Before you can compare actual work with expected work, you need to establish the work you expect to perform.
That’s where MEPTrax starts today.
MEPTrax Takeoff
AVAILABLE NOW
Work directly from PDF electrical plans. Count devices and assemblies. Organize the takeoff by room or area. Review your quantities and export your work.
Try MEPTrax Takeoff Free
30 days free. No credit card required.
Start with Takeoff.
Grow with MEPTrax.
MEPTrax Takeoff
AVAILABLE NOW
Know the work.
Plans → assemblies → quantities
MEPTrax Quote
COMING SOON
Know what you’re selling.
Cost → price → proposal → commitment
MEPTrax Business
COMING SOON
Know what’s happening — and what you actually made.
Production → labor → changes → money → profitability
MEPTrax Takeoff is available today. Field Production, Quote, Business and other future capabilities described on this page are under development and are not included with a Takeoff subscription unless explicitly stated.
The job changed.
Did your price change with it?
Extra work can consume labor and material just as surely as the work you originally bid.
But doing the work doesn’t mean you’re going to get paid for it.