Every joint, fitting
and reel, counted once.
What was ordered, what showed up, and what got installed are three different numbers — and on most jobs nobody owns the difference. Laydown MC keeps all three against the same line item, from requisition to the yard.
The problem
Three numbers that are supposed to match, and don't.
The PO says 240 feet of 6-inch Sch 40. The packing slip says 220, and nobody red-lined it because the truck came in at 4:30 on a Friday. The foreman pulled forty feet out of the yard for a tie-in and there was no ticket. Three months later the cost report says the job overran on material, and there is no single document that shows where.
Every part of that is normal. Each record is individually defensible. The problem is that nothing puts them side by side, so the difference only surfaces when it has already turned into money.
What it does
One line item, followed the whole way.
Material is selected from a catalog, ordered against a job, received against the order, and issued against the job. Every step writes to the same record, so the difference between any two of them is a subtraction rather than an investigation.
A 6-inch 150# weld neck is not a line of free text.
Class, type, size, schedule, material spec and unit of measure are separate fields, because that is the only way a report by size means anything. Free-text descriptions are what make two spellings of the same fitting look like two different fittings.
The order carries the job with it.
Project name, job number, PO number, cost code, vendor, requested and promised dates. The record the vendor is sent is the record the cost report reads — not a re-keyed copy of it.
One ticket, to the vendor and to your own people.
The order compiles into something you can send out for quote or release, and the same ticket goes to the yard so whoever signs for the truck knows what is supposed to be on it.
Short shipments are a field, not a memory.
Received quantity is entered against the ordered quantity. If they disagree the line stays open and says so, instead of quietly closing because the invoice arrived.
Unit price, extended, per cost code.
Prices live on the catalog item and on the order line, so a price that changed in June does not silently rewrite what a job paid in March.
Which jobs are waiting on what, and from whom.
Open projects with a checklist per line: ordered or not, from which vendor, promised when, received or short. The long-lead valve nobody ordered in March is the one that sets the schedule.
A CSV template for prices and for anything off-catalog.
Vendor price lists change in bulk, and every job has material nobody anticipated. Both go in by spreadsheet rather than one line at a time.
Pipe by the foot, fittings each, wire by the thousand feet.
Unit of measure is carried on every line and required on import. An import that drops it produces a cost report that is quietly wrong, which is worse than one that is obviously broken.
What the job actually used, after it closed.
Consumption per job stays queryable once the job is done, which is what makes the next estimate something better than a guess with a percentage on it.
Both trades
Mechanical and electrical material in one catalog.
Most jobs buy both, and most of the time they are tracked in two different spreadsheets by two different people who reconcile at the end, if at all. The material is different; the ordering, receiving and issuing are identical.
Mechanical — pipe and fittings
Line pipe, valves, flanges and fittings carrying the attributes an isometric and a take-off actually reference.
- CLASS — 150#, 300#, 600#
- SIZE — NPS, plus reducing sizes as a pair
- SCHEDULE — STD, XS, 40, 80, 160
- SPEC — A106-B, A234-WPB, A105
- END PREP — BW, SW, THD, FLG
- UOM — foot, each
Electrical — wire and fittings
Conductor, conduit and fittings on the same order, the same PO and the same cost code as the pipe.
- TYPE — THHN, XHHW-2, MC, tray cable
- SIZE — AWG and kcmil
- CONDUCTORS — count and ground
- CONDUIT — RMC, IMC, EMT, PVC by trade size
- VOLTAGE — 600V, 5kV, 15kV
- UOM — foot, MFT, each
Reporting
By class, type and size — per month, quarter or year.
The question that never has a fast answer is how much of a given item this company actually consumes. Not on one job — across all of them, over a period long enough to negotiate with. That is a rollup of typed fields, which is why the catalog is built out of typed fields.
| Item | Class | Size | UOM | Q1 | Q2 | Q3 | Year |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pipe, A106-B, Sch 40 | — | 6" | FT | 3,120 | 4,480 | 2,900 | 10,500 |
| Elbow, 90 LR, BW | STD | 6" | EA | 84 | 126 | 71 | 281 |
| Flange, WN, RF | 150# | 6" | EA | 40 | 62 | 38 | 140 |
| Gate valve, RS | 150# | 6" | EA | 6 | 11 | 4 | 21 |
| Cable, XHHW-2 | 600V | #2 | MFT | 9.4 | 12.1 | 7.8 | 29.3 |
| Conduit, RMC | — | 2" | FT | 1,880 | 2,240 | 1,410 | 5,530 |
Illustrative figures. This is the shape of the report, not data from anyone's job.
What it won't do
The part most software leaves off the page.
You have been oversold before, so here is the list before you ask for it. Some of these are deliberate and some are simply not built — both are marked.
Deliberate
- It does not place the order. It produces the ticket and the record. A person sends it, and a person is accountable for having sent it. Nothing here calls a vendor's API and quietly commits your company to a purchase.
- It does not price anything for you. Prices are what you enter or import. There is no market feed and no suggested price, because a number that appears from nowhere ends up in a bid.
- It is not an accounting system and does not post to one. It tracks committed and actual material cost against a cost code. Your controller's system remains the system of record for money.
- It does not decide what to buy. It records a take-off; it does not perform one. There is no automatic material take-off from a drawing, and anything claiming to do that on a real revision set is worth a hard look.
Not built yet
- No barcode or RFID scanning, and no bin locations. This tracks material against jobs and orders, not against shelf positions. If you need warehouse management, this is not it yet.
- No mobile app. It will run in a phone browser, which is not the same thing.
- No integration with anyone's ERP. CSV in and CSV out is the whole interface for now, and it is honest about that.
- Pricing is not set. There is no plan page because there is no plan yet. It will be per seat, it will be published rather than quoted, and that is as much as is decided.
Where this came from
Built alongside three QA/QC products, and separate from all of them.
The same person builds Hot Pass QC (pipeline welding), Sparky QC (electrical) and CodeShop QC (ASME code shop fabrication). Laydown MC covers the same trades and the same kind of job. That is where the resemblance ends, and it is worth being blunt about it.
There is no shared account, no shared login and no shared bill. They are separate systems with separate databases. If you already use one of the others, this will feel familiar and will not talk to it. Anything else would be a promise about work that has not been done.
Before it gets built
Tell me what breaks on your jobs.
This is being built now, and what goes in first is genuinely open. If you run material on pipeline or facility work — as a materials coordinator, a purchasing agent, or the PM who ends up owning it — the most useful thing you can send is the last time the numbers did not add up and what it cost to sort out.
No list to join, no drip sequence, no demo to sit through. Just a reply.
