Rock clauses, private line sign-offs and daily tickets, signed in the dirt

What excavation work puts in writing

• Proposal or subcontract for site prep, footings and basements, trenching, grading and haul-off, with unit prices for rock, unsuitable soil and dewatering, or a plain statement that they're excluded.
• Private utility acknowledgment from the property owner, covered below.
• Access and restoration terms: the route equipment takes, the driveway and lawn it crosses, where spoils go, and what you put back.
• Daily tickets with machine hours, operators and loads hauled, signed by the super or owner each day.
• Change orders when conditions differ from what the proposal assumed. The library's change order form is a start.
• Insurance certificates and lien waivers on GC work, with your subcontractor agreement.

811 and the lines 811 doesn't mark

Submit a locate request through 811 a few business days before you dig; your state's law sets the exact notice and how long utilities have to respond. Utilities then mark their own buried lines with paint or flags. Lines the owner put in, like irrigation, a feed to a detached garage or a gas line to an outdoor kitchen, may not be marked at all.

So ask before you dig, and get the answer signed. A one-page acknowledgment lists the private lines the owner knows about and where they run, carries the locate ticket number in a text field, and states what your lawyer says about lines nobody disclosed. A checkbox group can make the owner tick at least one answer: irrigation, septic, propane, low-voltage lighting, or none that they know of.

When the bucket hits rock, water or muck

1. 1

   Price it before the job

   Put unit prices in the proposal: per cubic yard of rock, per load of unsuitable material hauled and replaced, per hour of pumping.

2. 2

   Stop and document

   Measure, photograph and note the depth. Photos go in the envelope as a PDF next to the change order.

3. 3

   Get the go-ahead signed

   Fill the change order from your template, and a calculated field multiplies the quantity by the unit price. The owner or super signs on your phone with Sign in person, or from a link if they're off site.

4. 4

   Bring in the breaker

   Only after the signature. The certificate shows when it was signed, so nobody can say the rock work came first.

Daily tickets the GC won't dispute

Make the daily ticket a template: date, machines and hours, operators, trucks and loads, and a notes field for delays like a late locate or rain. The super signs it on your phone before you shut down. Every ticket's answers land in the template's Responses table on paid plans, one row a day, ready to export as CSV and reconcile against your invoice.

When the super can't come out to the machine, send the ticket by link instead. If any of the GC's field staff can sign, a signer group lets whoever is free sign it.

Pricing

Crew is $49 a month for 5 people, which covers an owner, an estimator and the foremen who write tickets, with extra seats at $8 a month. Solo is $15 a month for one person with unlimited envelopes, and Free includes 3 envelopes a month. New workspaces get 14 days of Crew free. See every plan.

What SignMaster doesn't do

• It doesn't file 811 locate requests or track their response deadlines.
• It doesn't do earthwork takeoffs or track machine hours on its own.
• It doesn't collect payments.
• It sends signing links by email; you can copy one and text it.