Four quantities, one bill item
Cable is on the schedule as a single line with a single quantity. On any given Tuesday that line has four different numbers attached to it, and they are all correct.
Some has been delivered to site. Some of that is in the store. Some has been issued to a crew. And some is actually installed. Each figure is larger than the next, and the gaps between them can be months.
The problem this creates is specific: if nobody says which of the four a report is using, different documents use different ones, and the project has a progress figure that moves when nothing has been built.
What the four quantities cost you
Two failures, and both are common enough to expect.
The first is inflation. Where progress is measured by cost, delivered material carries value and the curve rises on the day the lorry arrives. Nothing has been built. The curve is not wrong — it is answering a question about value rather than about work — but everybody reading it believes it is about work.
The second is the reverse and it surfaces at the end. Material issued to a crew and not installed sits somewhere, and it is invisible. It has left the store, so the store thinks it is used.
It is not on the wall, so the survey doesn't see it. The gap only appears at reconciliation, when the project discovers it has paid for more than exists.
The reconciliation
Delivered against issued against installed, once a month, per significant material. Not per bill item — that is unmanageable and nobody does it. The handful of materials that carry real value: cable, pipe, steel, formwork, whatever your job turns on.
What you are looking for is not exactness.
It is the direction and size of the gap. Installed well below issued means material is sitting in the field, which is either wastage or a stock that nobody has counted. Issued well below delivered is normal early and unusual late.
This is also the corroboration route from Week 8, used the other way round. There, store issues checked a claimed quantity. Here, the claimed quantity checks whether material has gone missing.
What the gap is telling you
A persistent difference between issued and installed has three explanations and they need different responses.
It might be wastage, in which case the figure is a cost problem and belongs with the commercial team rather than in a progress discussion. It might be uncounted stock in the field — material staged at a workface, still usable, simply not recorded anywhere. Or it might be a measurement lag, where the installation happened and the survey has not caught up.
Distinguishing them takes one walk. The point of tracking the gap is not the number but the question it forces somebody to answer, and on most projects nobody has been asked.
Working with a register that already exists
If you are setting this up, the decision is one line in the procedure: which of the four quantities is progress, stated once, and applied in every document. Everything after that is bookkeeping.
If you inherited it — which is the usual case — the decision was made implicitly and probably differently in different reports. The work is to find out what each document is actually using. Ask the cost report what its material figure represents, then ask the progress report. If the answers differ, you have found why the two never agree, and you have found it without changing anything.
System design
Three questions per row: where the number is born, who produces it, and which process consumes it. Without the third column a register is a list; with it, it is a system.
| Record | Produced by | Required quality | Verified against | Feeds |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delivered | Logistics | Quantity accepted, in the bill unit | Delivery note | Cost report |
| In store | Storekeeper | Current holding, not cumulative receipts | Stock count | Materials status |
| Issued | Storekeeper | Against an activity or area, not just a date | Store record | Progress corroboration |
| Installed | Site engineer or survey | Physically in place, not staged at the workface | Survey | Progress, schedule |
Only the last row is progress. If your report can't state which of the four it used, the answer is decided by whoever built the spreadsheet.
Practical insight
Pick the single material your project spends the most on. Get four numbers for last month: delivered, in store, issued, installed.
Most projects can produce the first three quickly and struggle with the fourth, which is itself the finding. If installed can't be stated, then the progress being reported for that material is derived from one of the other three, and everybody reading it thinks otherwise.
Key takeaways
- Delivered, in store, issued and installed are four different quantities for the same line, all correct.
- Only installed is progress. The other three are logistics and value.
- Cost-based measurement lifts the curve when material arrives, before anything is built.
- Material issued and not installed is invisible: gone from the store, not on the wall.
- Reconcile monthly, for the handful of materials that matter, looking for direction rather than precision.
- Setting it up is one line in a procedure. Inheriting it means finding out what each document already assumes.
Records born here. Materials reconciliation · store issue log · installed quantity record.
What is coming next
Material is not the only thing with several correct answers. The wall itself has three.
Next week: quantities from site — the bill, the drawing and the survey, and which of them belongs in a progress report.
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