Phil Mead

I have worked at Mead Construction since I left school. It is my dad's firm. Aggregates, muckaway, plant hire, whatever came through the door.

For most of that time we priced a delivered load the same way. Someone took the call, worked out roughly how far the site was, remembered what we charged the last customer out that way, added the material on and gave a number. It worked, mostly. It also meant the price lived in two or three people's heads, and if you rang on a Tuesday when the wrong one of us was in, you got a different answer.

The bit that finally got to me was holiday. The phone still rings in August.

So I started drawing it on a map. Ordnance survey sheet on the desk, a highlighter, and rings around the areas where I knew what we charged. It was a mess, but for the first time somebody else in the office could look at it and give the same price I would have given.

The first proper version was a spreadsheet with a postcode lookup bolted on. It was slow and it broke when anybody sorted a column. What it did prove was that the shape was right. Not miles. Journey time, with the bits you know better than the computer set by hand on top.

What changed after that was mostly learning where the model is wrong. A site fifteen minutes away down a farm track is not a fifteen minute job. A bridge you cannot get an artic under moves a whole village into a different price. So every square can be painted over, and a painted square always wins. That one rule is the difference between something a haulier will use and something they will quietly stop opening.

It has been running against real quarries and real products since before it had a name. We are now letting a small number of other firms use it.

If you price delivered loads and it still lives on a sheet in a drawer, ring me. I would rather tell you it is no use to you than sell you something you will not open.