Time tracking for plant maintenance and contract crews
Time tracking for plant crews and shutdown contractors, building by building.
Time tracking at a plant has to follow maintenance crews and contractors between buildings, yards and outbuildings, not just log a punch at the gate. ZeroBadge gives each worker a company-managed badge. Power on and the shift starts. Indoors the badge places itself from the Wi-Fi networks it can see. Each report lands in the building or area you've drawn. Power off and it ends.
- Nothing for the worker to carry but the badge
- Indoor positioning from Wi-Fi
- One month or more of battery life*
*Under qualifying operating conditions. Battery life varies with reporting frequency, signal conditions, usage, and configuration.
Same crew · same week · 3 jobsites
A time clock at each site
records the punchRiverside
Time clock
Harbor Yard
Time clock
Northgate
Time clock
Hours exist where a clock was placed and someone used it. The drive between sites is not part of the record.
A record that follows the worker
records the dayRiverside
Harbor Yard
Northgate
Time at each site and the transit between them land in one shift record.
What ZeroBadge does for you
How ZeroBadge helps Manufacturing
One company badge per worker covers safety alerts, timekeeping, labor analytics and ZeroBadge AI. Here is what each part does in your line of work.
01
Worker safety
A maintenance tech working alone in a far outbuilding can press the alert button or SOS, and the office dashboard shows which building or yard it came from.
Learn more02
Workforce management
See which contractor crews are in the boiler house, the tank farm or the warehouse right now, and which shutdown crew has missed its start time.
Learn more03
Automated timekeeping
Badge on starts the shift and badge off ends it, so shutdown contractors stop sending their own sheets and every worker's hours arrive in one format.
Learn more04
Workforce productivity
Set labor hours against each turnaround or maintenance job and see actual hours by area, with a forecast to completion before the shutdown window closes.
Learn more05
Location analytics
Wi-Fi positioning indoors places each report in the building or yard you drew, with no beacons or gateways. It answers which building, not which room.
Learn more06
Field logistics
Balance maintenance crews across buildings and outbuildings by comparing planned assignments with how crews actually moved through the plant during the week.
Learn more07
AI advisory and analytics
Ask which areas used the most contractor hours during the turnaround and get a plain-English answer from your own badge records, with every number linked.
Learn more
Safety alerts support your safety program. They do not replace supervision or training, ZeroBadge does not monitor alerts or contact 911, and in an emergency workers should call 911.
Where plant labor gets lost
A gate punch says someone was on site. It doesn't say where.
Large plants have several buildings, yards and outbuildings. Maintenance crews and contractors move between them all day.
Shutdown contractors by the dozen
A turnaround brings in contract crews for a few weeks. Their hours arrive on each contractor's own sheets, in their own format.
Hours with no area on them
A gate clock records the in and the out. It can't tell you how the day split between the boiler house and the tank farm.
No phones on the floor
Many plants keep personal phones off the production floor. An app-based time clock then has nowhere to run.
Outbuildings and yards
Pump houses, laydown yards and warehouses sit across the property. Time spent there rarely shows on a timecard.
Hours by area
See paid time split by location, with labor cost beside it.
The example company here is a construction contractor. The record works the same way at a plant. Draw each building, yard or outbuilding as a location and every recorded minute lands in one of them.
Add a loaded rate per worker and the hours become labor cost by area. Time away from every drawn location shows on its own line, so it can be reviewed.
Paid vs on site
Paid time · 1,045.2 h
On a jobsite 96.1%
- Jobsite
- Shop / office
- Supplier stop
- Between locations
- RiversideJobsite375.0 hOT 38.3 h · $28,070
- Harbor YardJobsite300.8 hOT 3.8 h · $20,530
- NorthgateJobsite328.9 hOT 17.6 h · $24,008
- ShopShop / office15.3 hOT 14.8 h · $1,496
- Cascade SupplySupplier stop6.2 hOT 5.8 h · $386
- Transit between locationsBetween locations19.0 hOT 15.4 h · $1,595
Loaded labor cost
$76,085
Overtime share
11.6%
OT hours at loaded rate + premium
Contractor timesheets
Compare what a contractor's sheet says with what the badge recorded.
During a shutdown the office reconciles contractor sheets against the gate log, often line by line. With badges, the shift starts and ends when the badge powers on and off.
Here the same day is shown twice: the way it is usually written on paper, and the badge record. The gap between the two is the time you would otherwise argue about.
Paper sheet · typical entry
Tue Oct 6- Name
- Lena O.
- Job
- Harbor Yard Distribution Center
- Start
- 6:30 AM
- Finish
- 4:00 PM
- Total
- 9.5 h
Times rounded to the half hour. One job for the whole day. Written up at the end of the week.
Tue Oct 6
- Shop & OfficeOn site25m
- Transit between locationsTransit1h 35m
- Riverside Medical PavilionOn site45m
- Cascade Supply Co.Vendor25m
- Harbor Yard Distribution CenterOn site6h 10m
Clock-in → out
6:30 AM – 3:50 PM
Recorded
9h 20m
The arithmetic
- Charged to Harbor Yard on paper
- 4:00 PM − 6:30 AM = 9.5 h
- Recorded at Harbor Yard
- 6.2 h
- Difference charged to Harbor Yard
- 9.5 − 6.2 = 3.3 h
One foreman, one day. Of the 3.3 h, 0.2 h is half-hour rounding and the rest was spent at other locations or between them.
Inside the plant
What your maintenance team will ask.
Indoor positioning
Indoors the badge places itself from the Wi-Fi it can see and learns site Wi-Fi over time. Separate buildings and yards split cleanly. Two rooms in one building usually don't.
Shutdown contractors
Issue a badge to each contract worker for the turnaround. Reassign it when they leave. Hours export to CSV, Excel or PDF.
Phone rules
The badge has its own cellular connection and needs no app. Personal phones can stay in the locker.
More than one plant
A crew that covers several plants or warehouses in a day keeps one shift, split by every site the badge was placed at. The drive between them gets its own line.
Rolling it out
Start with one plant and your maintenance crew.
- 01
Draw the plant
Draw each building, yard and outbuilding on the map as its own location. Give each one the name your crews use.Office · first day
- 02
Issue badges
Each maintenance worker gets a badge tied to their name. Keep a stock for shutdown contractors.Office · first week
- 03
Run the shift
Crews power on at the start of the shift and off at the end. Moves between buildings record themselves.Crews · daily
- 04
Review, approve, send
Clear the flagged items and approve the period. Approved hours are sent to your payroll provider automatically.Payroll · each period
Go deeper
Where manufacturers usually look next.
- SolutionJobsite time clock alternativesKiosks, tablets, portable site clocks and foreman punch, compared with a worn badge.
- SolutionTime tracking without phonesA company-managed badge instead of an app on a worker's personal phone.
- SolutionLabor cost trackingLoaded rates, job budgets and forecasts from badge-recorded hours.
- Industry guideConstructionGeneral and specialty contractors with crews across several jobsites, the shop and the supply house.
- Industry guideUtilities & EnergyLine crews, substations, generation sites and storm restoration, with hours by site.
- Platform tourThe platformA walkthrough of what the office sees: crews, jobsites, timesheets, analytics and payroll.
ZeroBadge AI
Ask ZeroBadge AI about your plant crews
Plain-English answers from your own records. Every number links back to the records behind it.
You ask
Which buildings used the most contractor hours during last week's shutdown?
Building 3 logged 412 contractor hours, followed by the tank farm at 366 and the loading yard at 188. Each total links to the shifts behind it.
You ask
Who had not badged on by the Monday 6:00 AM shutdown start?
Two of 31 contractor crew members had no shift by 6:15 AM. Both are listed with their company and assigned building, and their shifts began at 6:48 and 7:02.
You ask
How much of the maintenance team's week was spent outside the main plant?
Maintenance crews spent 62 of 441 recorded hours, 14%, at the east yard and outbuildings. The split by building is listed and linked to the records.
Answers come only from your company's own records. Every number links to the records behind it. Read-only; admins control access.
How ZeroBadge AI worksQuestions
Questions manufacturers ask.
How well does indoor positioning work inside a plant?
Can we track shutdown and turnaround contractors?
Is ZeroBadge meant for production employees who clock in at one building?
Do workers need a phone on the floor?
Get started
See your plant, your crews and your contractors in one week's record.
We'll walk through ZeroBadge with your buildings, your shutdown schedule and your payroll process in mind.
What we will walk through
- 01How a shift across several buildings is recorded
- 02Hours and labor cost by area
- 03Weekly timesheets, review and the payroll integration