After you press stop, the record is kept by us, in Canada.
A session is one recording of a person working, from the press of start to the press of stop. When it closes it does not stay on the machine, it does not go to the owner of the machine, and it does not go to your employer. It is kept by us, on our own servers in Canada, under licence from you, under your name, behind a door you can open.
A row of excavators standing close in the yard at the end of the day · The group's own photograph
It comes off the machine, and it does not stay there.
A session is made between two acts of yours. You press start. You press stop. What the session holds is fixed between those two presses, and this page is what happens to it afterwards.
The kit comes off the machine and goes back in its case, and nothing of ours stays on the machine. The record is kept by us, on our own servers in Canada, and it never leaves Canada. Nobody outside this company holds a copy, and nobody outside it is given one. It is held under licence from you. Under licence means three things at once. We may hold it and use it for what you said yes to and nothing wider. The permission is yours to give and yours to take back. And we never own it.
It does not go to the owner of the machine, whoever paid for the day, and it does not go to your employer. An owner can arrange a recording. Only you can agree to one, and you are told what is recorded, in plain words, before it starts.
What we build later, from sessions that pass the checks, is a way of working, which is the name here for how you run a machine once it has been recorded, admitted and built into something a machine can run. A release built from your record goes to the machine that licensed it, wherever in the world that machine works. The record itself stays here. Where a release goes and what it does on a job has a page of its own. This one is about the record underneath it, and where that record sits from the moment your thumb comes off stop.
The first recordings come from our own crews on our own machines. What is on this page is designed and written down, and it is written down before anybody outside those crews is asked to sit in front of it.
It gets its name when you press start and its seal when you press stop.
The rest of this site calls those two things the identifier and the signature. A name and a seal is what they are, and both of them are put on by an act of yours rather than by somebody at a desk afterwards.
The name
The moment you press start, the recording is given a name of its own. Not your name, and not the machine's. Its own, so this recording can be told apart from every other one ever made, including the one you make an hour later in the same seat. It is given once and it cannot be given twice, and it travels with the session everywhere the session goes.
The seal
The moment you press stop, the recording is closed and sealed. A seal on a crate does not stop a person opening it. It shows that a person did. This one works the same way and anybody who was not there can check it, which is the reason a session does not have to be taken on somebody's word.
A session gets its identifier when a person presses start and its signature when a person presses stop. Neither is issued later by somebody at a desk, and neither can be issued twice. From then on the two travel with the session wherever it goes: through the checks, into a built thing, which is what a machine ends up running, onto the count, and out again when you withdraw it. The count is the hours a way of working was in use on somebody's job.
The count is kept in sessions. A session is one recording, with its own identifier and its own signature, so it counts itself rather than being counted for you. It is what is licensed, what the hours are attributed to, and what you take back when you end it.
The covenant, clause three
Counting itself is the part that matters. The hours a way of working was in use are written against the sessions in use, on a record that already carries the name of the session and the name of the person who chose it for the job. Nobody keeps a tally for you somewhere else, and nothing has to be copied across from one book into another.
Change one thing in it and the seal shows it.
The seal is not on the recording alone. It is over the whole session at once, every part tied to every other part, so no piece can be lifted out and a different piece dropped in.
Picture a load chained down on a deck. One chain goes over all of it. Shift a single piece and the chain goes slack, and anybody walking past the truck can see that something moved. The site calls this one chain, and a chain over a load is the picture to hold on to.
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.
The morning check in that list is the check made on the recorder before the first session of the day, and it is kept with every session made under it. The photograph is the picture of the disconnected state, taken before the kit goes on and after it comes off. Both sit under the same seal as the recording, so an altered picture fails the same check as an altered reading.
Either it holds, or it names the first place it does not.
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.
The use of it shows on the day somebody asks a hard question years later. Nobody has to remember the weather, nobody has to be believed, and nobody has to produce a person who was standing there. The check is made against the record, and the answer is the same whoever asks it.
What the check cannot say is how well you worked. The chain has no opinion about the person in the seat. It only knows whether the record is whole.
It is kept under your name, because it could not be paid for otherwise.
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.
A loader at the open end of the feed shed in winter · The group's own photograph
No password. You ask for a link, and it is sent to your address.
There is nothing to remember and nothing to write on the back of a card. The door opens on a link, the link goes to you, and it is good once.
You ask
By your name. The request comes to us, and a person answers it.
A link is sent to your address
To your address and to no other. It is good once.
You open it
And you are looking at your own record, as it is written, with nothing arranged for the occasion.
The next time, you ask again
A link that was good once is not good twice. Nothing stays open behind you, and nothing is left lying around for somebody else to pick up.
What is behind the door is your own record, session by session, in the order the sessions were made.
- What was recorded, session by session, with the machine and the day on each.
- What was admitted and what was refused, with the reason named.
- What was built from it, and where it is listed under your name.
- The hours it has worked and what you are owed, checked against the record that shows who cleared the work.
- The day a withdrawal took effect, and the true date every copy is gone.
Admitted and refused, in plain words
Every session goes through a written procedure before anyone builds from it, and it comes out one way or the other. Refused is not a criticism of you. Every reason is about equipment or paperwork, and no check anywhere grades how you worked. A refused session is kept with its reason rather than thrown away.
Listed, in plain words
Listed means it stands in the register an owner looks in to find a way of working by the family of machine, which is a kind of machine rather than a model number. The listing carries your name, and what an owner licenses is the name.
The count, in plain words
Those hours are written from the moment a person on that crew chose a way of working by name. You see them where they were written, and so does the person paying for them.
Your employer does not see your record.
A record about you that other people can read and you cannot is a file kept on you. This one is the other way round. Below is who can open what.
You
All of it. Every session under your name, what was admitted and what was refused and why, what was built from it, where it is listed, the hours it has worked and what you are owed. You ask for a link and it comes to your address, good once. Nobody here can sign in as you.
The owner of the machine
The hours on their own machines, and nothing else of yours. Those hours are on the same record you see, because they are what the owner is charged for. Not your sessions, not what was refused, not what you are owed, and not what your way of working earned on anybody else's ground.
Us
We hold it under licence, for the uses you agreed to and no others. The people who run a session through the checks see equipment and paperwork. We owe you the money, so you get to check what we count, and what we hold you can see.
Your employer
Nothing of it, whether or not they arranged the recording. What you taught your employer's machine stays with that employer, and goes nowhere else without a fresh agreement carrying your signature. The record of you teaching it is still yours to open, and it is not theirs to read.
A recording is licensed for the uses you said yes to. A use you did not say yes to, your employer wanting it for discipline or a dismissal included, is not one we supply it for.
There is more than one copy, on purpose.
A single copy of anything is a copy waiting to be lost. Backups are the spare copies kept so that one failure does not take your record with it, and they are also the reason deleting takes longer than stopping.
Backups run to a horizon. In plain words: a spare copy made last week is still a spare copy this week. A spare copy is never edited. It is replaced, or it goes. So when you end it, two things happen at two different speeds, and you are told the date of each.
- The day your notice arrives
- Nothing new starts under itA job already underway finishes, because stopping a machine mid-pass is its own hazard, and that is the one delay in it
- Out of service
- It stops being available and nothing new runs itOut of service is an act, and it happens when the job already running has finished
- Every copy gone
- The raw and the derived alike, on a date you are toldDeleting every copy takes longer than taking it out of service, because backups run to a horizon. The later date is the one that means every copy
- What you are told
- Both dates, and which of them is whichYou are told both dates, and the shorter one is never allowed to stand in for the longer one
- A refused session
- Kept with its reason, and it leaves the same wayOn your notice, on a date you are told, like every other session under your name
The real date, not the convenient one. A company that told you a record was gone the afternoon you asked for it gone would be telling you what it wished were true.
There is no mark against your name in it.
Most records kept about working people are kept so that people can be compared. This one is not, and the things that would turn it into one are not in it and are not added to it later.
- No score on the record. A session is admitted or refused on equipment and paperwork alone.
- No grade of how you worked. The checks are about equipment and paperwork, and no check anywhere grades how you worked.
- No ranking. Nobody is picked from a list sorted by anything. You are asked for by name, by people who have seen the work.
- No comparison for sale. We do not sell one operator's record against another's.
- No copy to your employer.
- No use it was not licensed for, whoever asks.
There is a reason beyond fairness for keeping numbers off it. On blind, wet or soft ground every measure you could rank by turns on you. The careful operator works slower, corrects more, and reads as the worse one right up until the quick one is in the water. A score built from the record would pay the wrong person and teach the machine the wrong day.
The hours on your record are hours a way of working was in use on a job somebody else cleared. They are not your hours at work, and nobody reads them as a timesheet.
One thing is kept when the rest is deleted.
When you end it, the recording goes and everything built from it goes. The notice you gave stays, and there is a reason for keeping that one piece of paper.
The withdrawal itself stays on file, because a record that deletes its own withdrawals cannot show it honoured one.
Say you give notice, and somebody asks years later whether it was acted on. If the notice had gone with everything else there would be nothing left to show and nothing to check, and you would be back to taking a company's word for it. So the fact of it is kept: that you gave notice, the day it took effect, and the day every copy was gone. What is not kept is the recording, and what is not kept is anything built from it.
We hold it. We never own it.
Information about an identifiable person, held under licence, withdrawn at will.
The bunk line at sunset, the fence running out to the sky and the day going · The group's own photograph
For the owner, the operator and the people who can say no.
The record of a day on your machine is not yours and is not held for you. You see the hours a licensed way of working ran on your own machines, on the same record the person being paid sees, and those hours are what you are charged for. Your own operator teaching your own machine stays with you, and it goes nowhere else without a fresh agreement carrying their signature.
It is kept by us, on our own servers in Canada, and it never leaves Canada. It is held under licence from you, under your name. Ask for a link and it comes to your address, good once. Behind it is every session, what was admitted and what was refused and why, what was built, the hours it has worked and what you are owed. Your employer sees none of it. End it and you are told two dates, and both of them are true.
Nothing on this page reaches a machine or sits on one. A record is read after the fact, by the person it is about, and the kit that made it comes off and leaves no mark. No part of a safety case rests on any of it.
A session is information about an identifiable person, held under licence and never acquired. It is kept on our own servers in Canada and never leaves Canada. A release built from it goes to the machine that licensed it, wherever that machine works. The consents are separate and checked at the moment of recording, the record is sealed as a whole so an alteration cannot hide in it, and the true deletion date is stated, backups included. Where a works council, a union or another body has a say, its signature is asked for beside the operator's own.
Ask what would be held under your name.
If people ask for you by name and you want to know what would be kept, who could open it and when it would be gone, write to us and we will tell you before anything is recorded.