Excavation Software — Data Model | FieldCamp

An excavation contractor does not run a service call.

A dig is a site project — it gets located before anyone breaks ground, it runs on machines billed by the hour, it moves dirt by the load, and it is gated by permits and a one-call ticket from the day it starts.

FieldCamp models that. Your Customers, Requests, Estimates & Invoices, Jobs, and Visits already carry the client, the bid, the field schedule, and the billing.

On top of that, an excavation setup adds the records a dig needs and core has no home for: a Site project that runs the whole job, a Machinery asset with its own hours, a Locate Ticket for the 811 call, materials hauled, and permits.

What the core already gives you

Most of an excavation workflow is already wired into the core records. Keep them as-is and add the site-work layer on top.

• The client book — a Customer carries a separate property address and billing address, the lead source, and the account history, so homeowners, builders, and repeat GCs live in one place.
• The bid front end — a Request captures the inquiry and the site walk, then converts into an Estimate. An excavation bid is often a multi-option proposal: the Good / Better / Best scope is one estimate with selectable options, plus a deposit and an approval step.
• Billing — an Invoice handles deposits, payment terms, purchase-order numbers, overdue reminders, and card or online payment.
• The field schedule — a Job is the scheduled work, carried out as one or more Visits. A multi-day dig is one visit per day, each with crew assignment, on-site check-in and check-out, and a signature-gated finish step.
• On-site data capture — a pre-dig safety walk, a daily dig log, an as-built photo set, and a backfill compaction sign-off are captured as job forms, not loose fields.
• The price book — machine rates, material rates, and trucking are line items in the price book with vendors and cost ladders, and feed every estimate and invoice.

So the site-work layer is additive. Core handles the client, the bid, the billing, the field schedule, and the forms; the specialized objects handle the site project, the machinery, the locate ticket, the materials, and the permits.

What excavation adds

Each item below is a custom object built on FieldCamp's customization engine — its own fields, its own links to the core records, its own stages where it needs them, and its own record page assembled from building blocks.

Together they capture the five things that define the excavation business: a site-project spine, the machines that do the digging, the one-call ticket that keeps it legal, the dirt that moves, and the permits that gate it.

Site Project — the dig spine

The Site Project is the record that runs a dig from a signed contract through final grade.

It exists because a core Job models one scheduled work order, while a site job is a multi-phase project with its own contract value, its own machines and hauls, and its own long lifecycle.

It carries the project name, the project type (residential or commercial / site-work), the work type (foundation dig, grading, trenching, demolition, septic, pond, or utility install), the site address, the contract value and signed date, the start and target-complete dates, the cubic-yards of cut and fill, a permit-required flag, project photos and documents, and notes.

It links to the rest of the model: to the Customer it belongs to, to the Estimate and Invoice that handle the bid and billing, to the Jobs that produce the visits and crews, to its Locate Tickets, its Material Hauls, its Permits, the Machinery on site, and the team member running as foreman.

A net-yardage field can be a formula — cubic yards of cut minus cubic yards of fill — so the import or export figure updates itself rather than being retyped.

Machinery — the asset with hours

A Machinery record is one piece of heavy equipment — an excavator, a dozer, a skid steer, a loader, a backhoe, a compactor, or a haul truck.

It is a standalone asset so a machine's make, model, serial, and running hours follow it across every project, not retyped per job.

A Machinery record uses an assets block for its specs and a service-history block built from the visits performed against it, and a compliance block can count down hours to the next service so a machine due for a PM surfaces before it goes down.

Locate Ticket — the 811 call

A Locate Ticket is the one-call notification an excavator is legally required to file before digging.

Anyone breaking ground requests that the approximate location of underground utilities — gas, electric, water, sewer, telecom — be marked, and the call comes back with a ticket number and a clock.

It earns its own record because that clock is not yours.

A ticket has a legal wait before you can dig — two or three business days in most states — and an expiry date after which it has to be refreshed, so it runs on the one-call center's timing, separate from the project's.

A Locate Ticket belongs to its Site Project, and through the project it inherits the Customer and site address. One project can carry several over its life, because a long dig outlasts a single ticket and the call has to be refreshed.

Material Haul — the dirt that moves

A Material Haul is one record of material brought to or taken from the site — the import and export that site-work bills and reports on.

Trucking sand, gravel, dirt, and spoil is much of the day, so the loads are a record, not a note buried on the job.

Each Material Haul belongs to its Site Project, and a loadout sheet on the project compares projected, hauled, and actual material, so the dirt budget stays honest across a long dig.

Permit — the authorization with its own clock

A Permit is the city or county authorization a dig depends on — a grading permit, a land-disturbance permit, a right-of-way or street-cut permit, or a demolition permit, pulled before some work can legally start and closed out before the work is done.

Permits are a full example in their own right. The Permits data model covers the permit number, issuing authority, fees, dates, and the applied-to-closed lifecycle in detail.

On an excavation project, a Permit parents to the Job or the Site Project the way Equipment parents to a customer, and one dig can carry several at once — grading, right-of-way, and demolition.

How the excavation objects link to the core

A Customer owns Site Projects. Each Site Project pulls in the core bid and billing records, the Jobs that produce its visits and crews, its locate tickets, its material hauls, its permits, and the machinery working the dig — with a team member as foreman.

The site-work lifecycle

A site project moves through a named dig lifecycle — and it has one gate a service call never does: nobody breaks ground until the locate ticket clears. The diagram shows the path from the bid through locate, dig, backfill, and restore.

A few of these stages carry requirements before a project can move on. Marking a project Contract Signed asks for the contract value and signed date and shows a confirmation.

The move into Digging asks for a cleared Locate Ticket, and Closeout can ask for the final-grade photo set and, on residential work, an owner signature.

Along the way, the project keeps itself in sync. Marking it Contract Signed spins up the first dig Job.

Reaching Locate Cleared, Backfill, or Closeout sends a notification to the office, the foreman, or the client. And because a long dig can outlast its ticket, the loop back from Digging to Locate Requested is built in for a refresh.

The phase names are yours to rename. A trenching outfit might run Locate, Trench, Lay, Backfill; a grading contractor might run Strip, Cut, Fill, Compact, Finish — the same pipeline, relabeled to the way the shop talks about its work.

Residential vs commercial site work

One model serves both. The differences are a handful of fields and stages that turn on or off per segment — not a separate build.

The Site Project, Machinery, Locate Ticket, and Material Haul records serve both — fill the fields each segment needs. The permit-heavy, haul-heavy commercial path and the single-lot residential path are the same objects, configured differently.

Built on the customization engine

None of these records are a separate product bolted on.

The Site Project, Machinery, Locate Ticket, and Material Haul are custom objects with their own fields; the dig lifecycle, the locate-clear gate, and the machine-status steps are stages and workflows with their own requirements and automations; and each record page is arranged from building blocks like the project board, the loadout sheet, the cost view, and the service-hours countdown.

Machines lean on the Equipment asset pattern, and permits are the Permits custom object parented to the dig.

Rename a stage, add a field, or rearrange a page, and the model bends to how your shop actually runs — without touching the transaction spine underneath.

Related records

Coming from HCSS

Most earthwork and excavation contractors run on HCSS — HeavyBid for the bid, HeavyJob for the field, and Equipment360 for the fleet.

The shapes line up well: a job is the dig, cost codes price the work, foremen log crews and quantities from the field, and equipment carries its hours.

The difference is that in FieldCamp you own and shape the model, rather than fitting your shop to a fixed one. Most of what HCSS holds has a home here.

What you gain. In HCSS the structure is fixed — the objects, their fields, and how they relate are set for you.

In FieldCamp every one of those records is yours to rename, extend, restage, and relayout with custom objects and fields and your own stages and workflows, so you can match your old setup first and then bend it to the way your shop talks about a dig.

One honest difference. HCSS is a heavy-civil platform with depth FieldCamp does not replicate.

It pulls live engine hours, idle, fuel, and fault codes from HCSS Telematics; it runs mass-haul and earthwork takeoff against a model; it carries certified payroll and union-rate compliance; and HeavyJob runs a real-time job-costing engine that books labor and equipment against cost codes as the field reports it.

FieldCamp captures hours off the meter, logs quantities and crews from the field, and compares estimated against actual on the project — but the live telematics feed, the takeoff model, certified payroll, and the standalone cost-accounting engine are not built here.

If those are central to how you bid and bill, plan that part of the move deliberately.

See also

More in the FieldCamp data model.