Half-Day and Full-Day Visit Standard

Purpose

A block visit sells time, not a task list, and every dispute about one comes from the two being confused. The customer remembers a list. The shop sold hours. Somewhere around the seventh hour the tech is holding a cabinet against a garage wall with forty minutes left, and whichever way that goes, somebody is unhappy: start it and the visit ends with an unfinished install and no closeout, decline it and the customer says the day was not used.

This standard fixes what a half day and a full day mean before either is sold, defines what the clock counts, puts a checkpoint at the midpoint where a re-cut is still cheap, and reserves the last stretch for closeout so no visit ends with a tool still in the wall. The outcome it guarantees is that the block ends at the stated time with every started task closed and every dropped task named.

Scope

Covers the shop's block-booked visits: what the block includes, how the on-site clock runs, material runs, the mid-block checkpoint, the closeout reserve, and the extension decision. Applies to both the half day and the full day, which differ only in the numbers stated below.

Does not cover how the task list is dispositioned, screened and sequenced on arrival, which the multi-task work order SOP owns and which runs inside step 3 here. Does not cover payroll time recording, which is a separate ledger with its own legal obligations and is not the customer-facing block clock. Does not cover per-task workmanship standards.

Roles and responsibilities

Procedure

1. State the block's inclusions in writing at booking confirmation, before the visit exists. Name the counted hours, the arrival window, whether travel to site is counted, whether a material run is counted, and how a meal period is handled. Acceptance: a confirmation the customer received naming all five. What wrong looks like: a shop that has this policy but has never written it down, which means the policy is whatever the customer remembers at the end of the day. Stop rule: if the customer's confirmation is silent on the meal period or the material run, the office resends before dispatch rather than letting the tech negotiate it on site with a wrench in his hand.

2. Start the clock at the door and write the minute. The counted block runs from arrival on site to departure from site. On a full day the shop's unpaid meal period sits outside the counted block, so a full day of 8.0 counted hours is an on-site span of 8.5 hours; a bona fide meal period of 30 minutes or more during which the employee is completely relieved from duty is not compensable worktime under 29 CFR 785.19, and that is a payroll question that does not change what the customer's block counts. Acceptance: an arrival time on the ticket to the minute. What wrong looks like: a clock started when the first tool came out, which quietly gives the customer twenty free minutes and then reappears as an overrun at the far end. Stop rule: if arrival is outside the confirmed window by more than the shop's stated grace, the tech notifies the office before starting so the stop time moves as a decision rather than as a drift.

3. Convert the customer's list into a committed order inside the working budget. The working budget is the counted block minus 0.25 hours of setup minus the closeout reserve, which is 0.5 hours on a half day and 0.75 hours on a full day. That gives 3.25 working hours on a 4.0 hour half day and 7.0 on an 8.0 hour full day. Run the multi-task work order SOP to disposition, screen, estimate and sequence. Acceptance: a written order whose estimates sum at or below the working budget, agreed by the customer. What wrong looks like: committing to the full list on the theory that some items will go faster than estimated, which is a bet the shop loses because the items that surprise you run long, not short. Stop rule: no work starts until the committed order is agreed; if the customer will not cut, the office rebooks the balance.

4. Take at most one material run, and count it. Acceptance: zero or one run, its start and return times on the ledger, and the reason recorded as a named missing item. What wrong looks like: two and three runs on a block, which is a truck stocking defect wearing a scheduling costume and is visible only if the reason column is filled in. Hazard in this step: a run is driving, so the load gets secured before the tailgate closes, and long stock carried inside a van gets restrained rather than laid loose against the bulkhead where a stop turns it into a projectile. Stop rule: a second run needed means the lead decides whether the affected item is dropped instead, because the second run typically costs more of the block than the item is worth.

5. Run the checkpoint at the midpoint of the counted block and re-cut if the gap has opened. Compare hours consumed against the estimated hours of the items actually CLOSED, not the ones in progress. Acceptance: consumed exceeds closed-item estimate by no more than 0.5 hours on a half day or 1.0 hour on a full day. What wrong looks like: reassuring yourself that the slow item is nearly done, which is the specific belief that produces a day ending with three items at 80 percent. Stop rule: when the gap exceeds its threshold, stop and re-cut before continuing. Drop items from the BOTTOM of the agreed order, one at a time, until the remaining estimates fit the remaining working budget, and get the customer's confirmation of the dropped set at the checkpoint rather than at departure.

6. Start no new task inside the closeout reserve, and none whose estimate exceeds the pre-reserve time remaining. Acceptance: at the moment the reserve begins, every started task is closed, every tool is out of the wall, and the reserve is spent on the walkthrough, cleanup and the ledger. What wrong looks like: a cabinet lifted onto a wall at the top of the reserve, which converts a 45 minute closeout into an unfinished install, an uncleaned site and no customer walk. Hazard in this step: leaving is not the same as leaving safe, so an item stopped mid-way gets its opening covered, its line capped, its circuit re-energized or locked off as appropriate, and its guard reinstalled before the reserve is spent on anything else. Stop rule: if a task cannot be closed inside the pre-reserve time, it does not start, and the reason "the customer really wanted it" is not an override at tech level.

7. Route any extension through the lead, in the shop's minimum increment, with a new stop time. Acceptance: an approved extension recorded with its increment and a stated new departure time, before the original stop time passes. What wrong looks like: an unapproved hour that appears on the invoice, which the customer disputes and the shop writes off, so the tech worked it for nothing. Hazard in this step: an extension is where fatigue and failing light meet ladders and cutting tools, so no exterior, ladder or powered-cutting task proceeds into an extension without task lighting set up first, and a tech who is past a full day does not start one at all. Stop rule: no answer from the lead means no extension; the tech closes out on the original stop time.

8. Close the ledger at departure and walk the customer through it. Acceptance: departure time to the minute, counted total, every committed item marked closed or dropped with a reason, the material run recorded, and the customer's acknowledgment of the dropped set. What wrong looks like: a ledger completed in the truck from memory, which reliably totals to exactly the block. Stop rule: a customer who disputes the dropped set at departure is a checkpoint that did not happen; record the dispute and pass it to the office the same day rather than resolving it by giving away time.

The record this produces

The block ledger, one per visit: arrival and departure minutes, counted total against the block sold, the meal period if taken, the material run with times and the missing item named, the committed order with estimate and actual per item, the checkpoint reading, the dropped set with the customer's confirmation, and the extension approval if there was one.

The office reads it the same day to rebook the dropped items. Payroll reads only the hours the tech worked, which is a different number from the counted block whenever a meal period or an uncounted travel leg sits inside the span, and confusing the two is how a shop underpays or overbills without meaning to. The owner reads the material-run reason column across a quarter, because a truck missing the same class of fastener three times is a stocking list to fix, and the checkpoint column, because a shop whose blocks routinely fail the checkpoint is estimating its own common tasks light rather than working slowly.

Worked pass: full day, seven committed items

Full day booked at 8.0 counted hours. Setup 0.25, closeout reserve 0.75, so the working budget is 7.0 hours and the reserve begins at the 7.25 counted mark.

Committed order after step 3: three door knobs and a deadbolt 0.75, re-hang two sticking doors 1.5, mount two garage wall cabinets 2.0, replace four hardwired alarms 1.0, re-caulk two exterior windows 0.75, clean and replace a bath fan grille 0.5, install a closet shelf 0.5. Sum 7.0 hours, exactly the working budget, agreed by the customer with the last three items identified as the bottom of the order.

Step 4 fired once. The lag screws on the truck were too short to give the cabinet mounting standard its required framing engagement through 5/8 inch drywall, and the run cost 0.5 counted hours with the missing item recorded as "3-1/2 inch structural screws, garage cabinet mount".

Step 5 FAILED. At the 4.0 hour counted mark the ledger read: setup 0.25, knobs 0.75 actual against 0.75 estimate, doors 2.25 actual against 1.5 estimate, material run 0.5. Consumed 3.75 hours. Closed-item estimates totalled 2.25 hours. The gap was 1.5 hours against a 1.0 hour full-day threshold, so the checkpoint failed and the stop rule fired. The doors ran long because one needed its strike mortise re-cut and a shim behind the top hinge, which is ordinary work and not a mistake; the mistake available here was to keep going.

The re-cut: 7.0 minus 3.75 leaves 3.25 working hours. The remaining committed items summed to 4.75 (cabinets 2.0, alarms 1.0, caulk 0.75, fan grille 0.5, shelf 0.5), which is 1.5 over. Dropping from the bottom of the agreed order one at a time: shelf out leaves 4.25, fan grille out leaves 3.75, exterior caulk out leaves 3.0, which fits inside 3.25. Three items dropped, confirmed with the customer by text at the checkpoint with a note that the exterior caulk wants its own weather window anyway.

The back half ran to estimate: cabinets 2.0, alarms 1.0. Working hours consumed finished at 6.75 against 7.0, so the tech reached the reserve boundary 0.25 hours early. Step 6 then did real work: all three dropped items estimated at 0.5 or more, every one larger than the 0.25 hours of pre-reserve time remaining, so none restarted and the tech went into cleanup instead. Departure at 8.0 counted hours, on-site span 8.5 with the meal period, ledger walked with the customer at the door and the three dropped items already on the office's rebooking list.

References

• 29 CFR 785.19, which governs whether a meal period is compensable worktime for the employee and which is the payroll ledger referenced in step 2, separate from the customer's counted block
• See related: Multi-Task Work Order Scoping and Sequencing, which owns step 3's disposition, screening and sequence
• See related: Heavy Item Wall Mounting Standard, which sets the framing engagement the worked pass's material run existed to satisfy
• Trade-standard practice for block-booked residential service visits