Where the information actually gets lost
It is rarely lost on site. The technician saw everything. It gets lost in the gap: the drive back, the three other jobs, the text to a manager who was on a call, the intention to write it up properly tonight. By the time it reaches the estimator it is a sentence and a rough number.
The estimator then prices a job they cannot see, using a description that has been through two people's memories. That is where margin quietly disappears — not in the pricing model, in the input.
Designing the handoff so it survives a bad day
- One place: the field writes to the record the office already reads.
- One moment: before leaving the property, not at the end of the day.
- One prompt: a short, consistent set of things every visit must capture.
- One signal: the office is notified that a visit produced new information.
- One owner: someone is accountable for turning it into the next step.
What the office needs that the field forgets
- Access constraints — where to park, which gate, what the dog does.
- Who was actually present and who makes the decision.
- Measurements in units, not adjectives.
- What the customer was told, especially about timing and price.
- Anything that changes the crew, the duration or the material list.
The handoff back the other way
Handoff is not one-directional. The crew arriving tomorrow needs what the estimator promised, what the customer objected to, and what was already tried. A field team working from a work order with no history repeats questions the customer already answered — which reads to them as disorganisation.
The same rule applies in reverse: the office writes to the record, the field reads the record, and nobody is relaying anything by phone that should have been written once.