A machine can run your way of working, and a person still says go.

On this pageFrom sessions to a releaseWhat arrivesLoaded is not clearedThe morning of a jobOnce it is clearedOn the jobStopWhat it does not doNobody choosesTwo on one jobThe countDoes this replace youShort answers

It is built away from any machine, and a named person signs it.

Nothing you recorded goes to a job as it stands. A session, which is one recording of a person working, is admitted or refused first, and admitted means it passed a written check about equipment and paperwork. From admitted sessions we build a way of working, and what leaves us is a release, which is the one thing of ours that ever reaches a machine.

The learning happens somewhere else

What crosses is a signed release, and a named person signs it.

We build a way of working away from the machine, and no machine on a site is learning while it works.

Machines that learn

A machine on a job carries a released way of working or the basics it came with, which means the machine as its maker set it up, before any of this. A person on that crew decided which.

Ready is the machine's state. Cleared is a person's word.

Loaded means a way of working is on the machine and waiting. Waiting is all it does. Fitted and ready are states a machine can be in before anybody has said a word. Cleared to work is a different kind of thing. It is a person's word, given on the day, after the walk-around, and a machine cannot give it to itself. The states below are in the order they happen, and the line between a machine that could run and a person saying go is the whole point of listing them.

Fitted

The kit is on the machine, and the person who fitted it says so.

Ready

A way of working is loaded and could run. Nobody has told it to.

Cleared

A person has walked around the machine, started it, chosen by name whose way of working runs, and said go. Given on the day, every day, with their name on it.

Running

After the clearance and never before it. The count starts from the same choice, so the hours and the clearance sit on one record and neither can be adjusted without the other.

Yesterday's clearance does not carry over. There is no default and no last-used. A person starts the machine, every day, and before every job the choice of whose way of working runs is made again with their name on it. Choosing is an act, and the act is where the count begins.

Three things are true on every job it runs on.

If you want to know what it is like to be on a site where one is running, it is these three, and they do not come apart.

Where our part ends

What moves a machine is the machine.

Nothing we make touches a machine except a signed release, and nothing we make is a part. The register is the list where a named way of working is found, and the count is the hours it was in use.

Even Steven makes nothing that moves. It is the agreement, the register and the count that sit underneath somebody else's machine.

What happens between a proposal and a bucket in the ground belongs to that machine and to whoever built it. It was theirs before any of this and it is theirs still, and no page here will describe it or claim it.

It is not a faster machine, a safety device, or a site without people.

The claims below get made for things like this, by people who would like to sell you one. We do not make them, and you should not accept them from anyone.

• It does not make a machine faster. A better way of working makes better decisions about when to move. The hydraulics, the process and the material set everything else.
• It is not a safety device. Nothing here is an interlock, a guard or a stop, and no safety case should be written with any part of it resting on us.
• It does not replace the walk-around, the start, or the person who says go. It cannot clear a machine and it cannot keep one cleared.
• It does not run a site without people. It proposes. A person authorizes, on the day, every day.

We make no promise about output or crew size, and we could not keep one. What we can hold is on the covenant: the name, the hours, the pay and the way out.

One way of working at a time, chosen at its own handover.

A machine runs one named way of working at a time. Where a job passes from one to another, the second is chosen the way the first was, and the hours under the first stop where the second is written.

At the handover

Nothing runs blended, and each count stops where the next one is written.

The ground changes, or the next part of the job wants a way of working nobody on the crew has, and somebody chooses again: by name, with their own name on the choice, the same act as the first. The first count stops at the handover and the second starts there, on the same record, so each person being paid reads their own hours and the owner reads both.

Nothing is blended on the machine. It runs the way of working that was chosen, under the name that was chosen, until a person chooses again or the job is done. There is no in-between state where two are running at once and nobody can say whose hour it was.