Field note 05 · Heavy civil operations · Equipment cost visibility
Maintenance labour cost by machine and component, from timesheets you already have
Labour was tracked as a department total. A Python tool now maps every timesheet entry to a machine and a component category.
Built by RootN’s founder as an engineer inside a Western Canadian heavy-civil contractor’s equipment operation. The employer and its systems are not named.
- Per machine
- labour cost visibility
- Per component
- cost breakdown by category
- Historical + new
- runs on past and incoming timesheets
- No extra entry
- built from existing records
The situation
Maintenance labour was tracked as a department total. Nobody could say which machine, or which type of component, was consuming the hours, so maintenance spend and replacement timing were judged without it.
What was built
A Python tool that reads existing timesheet records, picks out labour hours and cost codes, and maps each entry to the equipment unit and component category. It runs on historical records and on new timesheets as they arrive.
The result
Labour cost by machine and by component, from data the operation already had, with no extra data entry. The output feeds the lifecycle-cost models and maintenance priorities.
What this means for you
Where the same pattern applies
If your cost codes are reasonably consistent, the data you need for machine-level cost probably already exists.