Businesses · Infrastructure
For infrastructure teams running multi-year packages across corridors, spans and stretches — usually with more vendor equipment on site than their own.
The drain
On an infrastructure package, the largest line in equipment cost is a bill from somebody else — raised against hours you did not record, for diesel you did issue, on a machine you cannot switch off.
The largest single line in equipment cost is an invoice raised by the counterparty, certified by you, and supported by an hour meter that only one of the two parties has ever looked at.
On most packages the principal contractor issues the fuel and the vendor operates the plant. Between the yard and the engine there is no record, and shared assets move between packages without one.
Standby is contractual, legitimate and almost never examined. An asset mobilised early, or held after its scope closed, bills exactly the same as one that is working.
Nine rupees of maintenance is not the risk. The risk is a stalled asset on a milestone activity, where the cost is not a repair but a penalty and a stretch of schedule.
Assets move between stretches and packages across a build that runs for years. Mobilisation lands on a cost centre chosen by convenience, not by consumption.
Hire, diesel and standby are ₹78 of every ₹100 — and every one of them is contested at the point of invoice, which is precisely the moment at which nobody has a record. Instrumentation moves that argument backwards, to the hour it actually happened.
One package month
A single month on a live package. Five moments where equipment cost is created — and in four of them the only witness works for the vendor.
This is not an allegation of bad faith. It is a measurement gap, and it closes the moment an independent record exists.
The plant arrives. So does the standby clock.
Two crawler cranes mobilised for a span erection that slipped six weeks. The contract entitles the vendor to standby, and they took it — correctly, and without anyone noticing until the bill.
Avoidable, if anyone had been watching the front and the mobilisation date at the same time. Nobody was, because they sit in two different systems.
Which package is this machine on today?
Shared plant crosses from Package 3 to Package 5 and back. Cost follows whoever raises the invoice first, not whoever consumed the asset. On a multi-year build, this is the largest source of misattributed equipment cost.
There was simply no boundary that could tell. On a four-year build with shared plant, this is the largest single source of misattributed equipment cost.
You issue the fuel. They operate the machine.
The bowser slip records a quantity and a signature. It does not record which asset the diesel entered, or whether the hours claimed against it could have consumed that much.
At mid-month it is a rounding difference nobody would raise. Over a four-year build across a dozen packages, it stops being a rounding difference and starts being a budget.
Idle plant invoices exactly like working plant.
Eleven vendor assets on the package. Three have not recorded a working hour in nineteen days. All eleven appear on the monthly bill at the same rate.
Three vendors, one rate card, a threefold difference in what the package actually received. Until it was measured, all three were simply 'on site'.
You certify what you could not witness.
Every month, a commercial team signs off hire charges, diesel and standby against readings supplied by the party being paid. Not because they are careless, but because there has never been an alternative record.
The dispute did not go away. It simply moved to before the payment — which is the only side of it where it can still be won.
How Taabi is different
Every vendor can supply an hour meter reading. That is a claim, and a claim from the party being paid is a negotiation.
Taabi holds the claim against hour meter, engine load, package geofence, fuel draw and vendor pattern before a commercial team is asked to sign it.
A monthly reading supplied at invoice can only be accepted or contested. A continuous record is not a counter-claim — it is simply what happened, and it existed before the argument did.
Rules out retrospective readingStandby, warm idle and working hours are three different things billed at one rate. Engine load is the only signal that separates them, and no hour meter carries it.
Rules out idle billed as workShared plant crosses boundaries. Without a geofence, cost lands on whichever package raised the invoice first — which on a multi-year build compounds into a number nobody can unwind.
Rules out cross-package billingAn excavator under load burns at a knowable rate. If the claimed hours had been worked, the fuel would show it. Fuel is the physical check that an hour meter cannot be argued past.
Rules out phantom hoursOne month is a discrepancy. Six is a commercial position — and it moves the conversation from a disputed invoice to a renegotiated rate, at the next award rather than at the next argument.
Establishes patternThe five signals are not a feature list. They are the reason a commercial team can sign the bill and defend it — and the reason the conversation happens before the money moves, not after.
This is the whole difference. A vendor's hour meter gives you a claim. Hour meter plus load plus geofence plus fuel plus pattern gives you a record — and only a record can be certified.
Use cases
The question is not whether the vendor's machine is on your site. It is whether it worked, on your diesel, against your package.
Diesel issued across packages, drawn by assets you do not own. Reconcile it before it is invoiced back to you.
A stalled asset on the critical path does not cost a repair. It costs a milestone, and the penalty behind it.
Vehicles moving on live corridors and public stretches carry your name, whoever owns them.
Compare packages, vendors and stretches on the same terms, across a build that runs for years.
Solutions available
Engine hours, utilisation and idle time across owned, hired and vendor plant — attributed to the package paying for it.
Diesel issued, drawn and burned, traced to the asset and the package rather than to the vendor's word.
Asset movement across corridors, stretches and yards, with geofenced package boundaries.
Health and fault risk on the assets sitting on the critical path, before the milestone slips.
ADAS and driver monitoring for vehicles on live public corridors under your project's name.
Utilisation, diesel and downtime benchmarked by package, vendor, stretch and asset class.
Business impact
Not a percentage we cannot source. A list of things that are true on the left today, and true on the right after.
Every row on the right resolves to the same denominator — ₹ / asset-month
Who it's for
Project directors
Leaders whose penalty exposure is measured in weeks, and whose equipment risk is measured in nothing.
Commercial and QS
Teams signing hire bills and diesel consumption on readings taken by the counterparty.
Vendor management
Managers who cannot separate the vendor whose plant runs from the vendor whose plant is merely present.
FAQ
It is an independent record of what every asset on a package actually did, regardless of who owns it. Engine hours, diesel drawn, idle time and location are recorded at the machine and attributed to the package carrying the cost, so hire bills, diesel and standby claims are reconciled against measurement rather than settled by negotiation at the point of invoice.
Because it inverts the usual relationship between control and exposure. You carry the cost, the schedule risk and, on a live corridor, the reputational risk — while the party operating the asset also supplies the record you are billed against. That is not an allegation of bad faith; it is a measurement gap, and it closes the moment an independent record exists.
In practice this is a contracting question more than a technology one, and it is easiest to resolve at award rather than mid-package. Vendors whose plant genuinely runs tend to be indifferent or supportive, because an independent record settles standby and idle disputes in both directions. Resistance is itself informative, and worth surfacing before mobilisation rather than after.
Get started
See the drain, the package month and the evidence chain run across owned, hired and vendor plant on one view.
