Blockers & lost time

When work on a construction site stops — the access road closed, the scaffold not struck, the trade in front running late — someone loses time, and someone is usually to blame. SimOps captures that as a Blocker: one first-class, timed record of what stopped, when, and whose work it held up. Anyone on site can suggest a blocker from their phone; the coordination team confirms it; and the whole site's stopped hours roll up as Lost time the commercial team can read at a glance.

What it does for you

• One record, one truth. However a stoppage arises — a delay, a clash, an incident, a permit you're waiting on — it lands as the same kind of record, so "how much time have we lost, and to whom?" has a single answer.
• The field suggests; the office confirms. A raise from the phone is a suggestion, never a live blocker. A coordinator triages it — suggested → confirmed — so an unvetted, possibly cross-trade grievance never counts against anyone until a human signs it off.
• Lost time, in crew-hours. Lost time = the stoppage window × the stood-down headcount, derived live and never stored, split by who lost the time and who's responsible — see lost-time-accounting.
• Blame recorded by the commercial side, never off a field raise. Who's responsible is set when the commercial band declares a blocker or a coordinator confirms one — never provisionally off a field suggestion.

The lifecycle at a glance

A blocker runs two axes at once — a lifecycle and a triage state:

suggested → confirmed → resolved → archived, with rejected as the off-ramp — reachable from confirmed too, as a re-decision. Only a confirmed blocker is live, site-wide, and counted. There is no reopen edge — the recourse is a re-raise, a fresh record that names what it re-raises and takes a fresh clock. See blocker-commercial-axis-and-triage.

See it / try it

• Try it: Blocker awaiting triageTry it ↗ seeds a fresh Demo World with a crew stood down and a suggested blocker in the triage queue, ready to walk the confirm decision.

Where to go next

The Guide zone carries a focused walkthrough per audience:

• Overview — blocker vs snag vs delay, the suggest→confirm model, and where blockers surface.
• Reviewing & triaging — the coordinator's job: confirm, reject, record blame, resolve, and read the ledger.
• Raising a blocker — every intake, from the phone-first sheet to the desktop declare and the delay handoff.
• Snags & work close-out — the neighbouring own-work snag, and why a cross-trade problem is a blocker instead.
• Reference — the API surface, state table, lost-time derivation and source map.