One session, from start to stop.
A session is one continuous recording. It begins when a person presses start and ends when a person presses stop, and everything it carries is fixed between those two acts. This page is what it holds, what admits it, and whose it is.
The unit in an armoured engineering vehicle's cab · The group's own render
It starts when a person says so, and it stops the same way.
A session has no automatic beginning. Somebody presses start, and from then until somebody presses stop the recorder watches the seat. Nothing is added to it afterwards and nothing is taken out. Stop is pressed by a person too, and what was recorded up to that moment is the session.
Two sessions on the same day are two records. Each has its own identifier and its own signature, so it counts itself, and it is licensed, paid for and withdrawn on its own. Nothing of yours goes into a built thing with another person's work unless you said yes to that, separately.
A session is the unit of everything here. It is what you license, what the hours are attributed to, and what you take back when you end it.
What a session carries.
A session is more than the recording. It carries the who, the what and the how of that day, so that years later nobody has to remember and nobody has to be believed.
- Who was in the seat
- The person, by name, and the agreement that covered them at the moment the recording was made
- The machine
- Which machine it was, and how it was set up, so the record is read against the machine it came from
- The fitting that day
- How the recorder was put on: the photograph of the disconnected state, the check that nothing is connected, and the set-up as it was left
- The morning check
- The check made on the recorder before the first session of the day, and kept with every session made under it
- The three things, one clock
- What your hands did, what the machine did back, and what you were looking at when you acted, timed together
- The ground and the conditions
- What the ground did is recorded too. The ground, the material and the weather are noted as the crew found them
- The moments
- Notes made against the clock, so the places where the technique shows can be found again later
- The chain
- One chain over the whole record, signed, so an altered reading fails the same check as an altered picture
The claim a person made, and can be held to.
Nothing of ours is connected to the machine while you work. A record has to be able to show that to somebody who was not there, on a day nobody remembers, and a line in a log does not do it.
A box ticked in software is a claim software makes about itself.
The photograph of the disconnected state is a claim a person made, on the day, with their name on it. It sits inside the record where it cannot be swapped out quietly, beside the check that nothing was connected and the set-up as it was left.
A session without it cannot show its set-up, and a session that cannot show its set-up is refused, however good the day was. The photograph is the part of the record a person can walk up to and check.
The technique is in the moments, and the moments are in the record.
Most of a session is a machine doing what a machine does. The moments where it mattered are short, and a record that cannot find them again is a long recording and nothing more.
The yard at dusk · The group's own photograph
A place in the record to say where to look.
The person in the seat, or somebody working with them, can note a moment against the session's clock. A note does not change the recording. It marks a place in it, and it carries four things.
- 01WhenThe time on the session's own clock, so the note lands on the span it belongs to and nowhere else.
- 02WhatWhat was seen, in the words of whoever saw it. A lever eased off early, a pass taken twice, a bucket that came up clean.
- 03What was going onThe job at that moment: the ground, the load, the weather, and the thing that made it hard.
- 04Who said soThe person who made the note, by name.
So the record opens at the right place.
A note is a bookmark, not a verdict. When somebody comes back to a session to learn from it, the notes are where they start, and they find what happened, timed and signed, with the name of whoever pointed at it.
Nothing in a note grades the moment. It says where a moment is, and leaves what it was worth to the people who read it.
A written procedure, with every reason named.
Before anyone learns from a session it goes through the same checks as every other, and it comes out admitted or refused. Refused always comes with its reason, and every reason is one of these.
- The record is incomplete: a field the record needs is missing, or the chain does not verify.
- The consent was not live: the agreement covering the recording was not in force when it was made.
- The set-up cannot be shown: something was connected that should not have been, the photograph or the check is missing, the machine does not match what was set up, or the morning check is not the one kept with the session.
The ground, the material and the weather are not fields the record needs. When they are missing they are noted as missing, and the session goes through.
- The ground.
- The material.
- The weather.
Refused is not a criticism
Every reason on the list is about equipment or paperwork. Nothing in the procedure grades how you worked, and nothing anywhere else does either.
Kept, with its reason
A refused session is not thrown away. It is kept, and the reason travels with it, because a record of what went wrong is worth as much to us as a record of what went right.
An alteration cannot hide in a session.
The record is held inside one chain and signed, and the signature covers all of it: the recording, the photograph, the morning check, the notes, the names. Change any part of it afterwards and the chain stops verifying, and the refusal names the first place it failed.
So a session does not ask to be trusted. A person who was not there can check it and be told either that it holds, or the first place where it does not. An altered photograph fails the same check as an altered reading.
What the chain shows
That the record is as it was when it was made, from the press of start to the press of stop, and that nothing was put in or taken out on the way.
What it does not show
How well anyone worked. The chain has no opinion about the person in the seat. It only knows whether the record is whole.
Information about an identifiable person, held under licence.
The session is yours. What we build from it is ours.
A session identifies the person in the seat by design, because a way of working with no name on it could not be licensed, credited or paid for. So it is information about you, and the rights that attach to it are yours and not your employer's: to be told before it starts, to agree separately, to see what is held, and to withdraw at will.
Withdraw and no new job starts under it from the day your notice arrives. You are told the true deletion date, backups included, and a short date is never allowed to stand in for a long one.
Talk to us.
If you run a machine and want to see what a session of yours would carry before you agree to one, write to us.