Set the rules, or accept the defaults

Whose job: the engineer. You should see the setting changes, and the change is on the record with who made it.

What you are doing

You are setting the rules the product uses when it decides what to recommend and what it costs: the condition thresholds, the treatments, the unit rates.

This step is optional and it is deliberately placed after you have looked at the data. Everything ships with a default that produces a defensible answer, and a council that changes nothing still reaches a programme. Opening with configuration is the most reliable way to turn an afternoon into three weeks.

It is the asset engineer's decision, and often finance's for the rates. The one setting worth attention on day one is the unit rates, because they are the only input where your council's real numbers are certainly better than ours.

What PaveKeep does with it

The setting, and a record of the change: what it was, what it became, who changed it and when.

That ledger is not bookkeeping. Every figure this product publishes was produced under some configuration, and a document produced in March cannot be defended in September unless the settings it used are recoverable. Documents carry the configuration they were made under, stamped.

What it will not do

• The method — A better unit rate does not make a forecast right. The rates decide what the work costs; how fast a road deteriorates is a model, and no amount of configuration turns a model into a measurement.
• The product — A setting can be returned to the platform default by clearing it, and the history says what it was — but a document already produced under the old setting does not change, and should not. It was correct when it was made.
• Your role — Changing configuration is its own capability. An engineer who may load a network and run a programme does not necessarily hold it, because the settings decide what every figure the council publishes is built on.
• What you have not got yet — Nobody can tell you your council's unit rates. Ours are a starting point and are labelled as such; the ones that matter are in your last three contracts.

How you know it worked

Before: a tenant on the platform defaults.

Do: Settings, configuration. Change a rate.

After: the new value in place, and an entry in the configuration history with the old value, the new one and your name.

If it was wrong, set it back — or clear it, which restores the platform default. Both are recorded. Nothing is lost, because the history holds what it was.

Hand to: whoever runs the programme next. A changed rate changes their output, and finding that out from the output is worse than being told.

If it went in wrong: this step can be undone, and the undoing stays on the record rather than erasing what happened.

← Find out what it could not see · Run a programme against a budget → · All 13 steps