The problem, and why it matters
A construction project agrees its material rates months in advance. What it cannot fix in advance is timing. Material is ordered when someone on site notices it is short, which is usually when the work in front of it has already stopped.
Three businesses have to act together for one delivery to arrive on time: the builder who needs the material, the supplier who holds it, and the transporter who moves it. Each works from its own information, through phone calls, messages and spreadsheets. None of them sees the schedule change that created the need until it is too late to act cheaply.
The cost does not appear as one line item. It appears as rework, idle crews, missed pour windows, part-loaded trucks, wasted material above the normal allowance, and clerks reconstructing what was promised when a delivery is disputed. Rework alone runs at about 5% of project cost on average and 12–15% on a poorly run job, according to the Construction Industry Institute (RS-153). Standard wastage allowances in Indian rate analysis already assume around 10% on sand and site-mixed concrete, 8% on bricks, 5% on cement and 3% on steel (CPWD DSR); losses from late or mismatched supply sit on top of those.
The three parties
| Party | What it needs | What it controls | What it usually lacks |
|---|---|---|---|
| Builder or project operator | The right material, on site, before the dependent work starts | The construction programme, the approved supplier panel, budgets and approvals | Early warning that a schedule change has created a new requirement |
| Material supplier or yard | Firm orders it can plan stock and dispatch around | Stock, grades, prices and delivery capacity | Direct visibility of the builder’s demand, and feedback on why it lost an order |
| Transporter | Full loads booked against confirmed slots | Vehicles, drivers and routes | Notice of when and where a load will be ready, and whether the site can receive it |
A dealer often sits between the builder and the supplier. A good dealer does real work: carrying credit, breaking bulk, holding local stock and absorbing quality disputes. The coordination problem is not the dealer. It is that every request passes along a human chain one call at a time.
Where the gaps are
- The demand signal arrives late. The need is found on site, not in the schedule, so every later step starts behind.
- Quoting is sequential and blind. A manager calls a dealer, the dealer rings several yards, and each yard quotes without knowing the window or the competition. Confirming one order can take three to five days.
- Freight is booked after the order. A two-day slip on one delivery is not matched by a change to the dependent work or the truck booking, so it compounds. In India, up to 40% of truck time runs empty (NITI Aayog and RMI).
- Approvals wait for people. Prices, substitutions and discounts queue behind whoever can sign, in a chain that moves in days while the site moves in hours.
- The record lives in messages. What was promised, what arrived and who agreed to it sit in chat threads, so a disputed delivery takes days to reconstruct.
- Suppliers cannot improve. A yard that loses an order is rarely told why, so it cannot change the price, window or stock position that would have won it.
A coordinated approach
The approach treats the construction schedule as the demand signal and keeps one shared operational record that all three parties work from. Agents do the coordination work inside limits each business writes once. Anything outside those limits stops and waits for a named person.
- Read the schedule the builder already keeps. No new planning system is required.
- Compute the requirement when a date moves: which material, which grade, how much and by when.
- Ask the approved panel at once, with grade, quantity, delivery window and site access attached.
- Allocate on stated inputs: distance to site, stock on hand, the window promised, the grade required, committed load and price above the supplier’s floor. The reasons are shown, including to a supplier that lost.
- Attach freight to the accepted slot in the same step, so the truck is booked against a confirmed delivery rather than a guess.
- Record each commitment once, so the builder, supplier and transporter hold the same account of what was promised and what arrived.
What stays the same matters as much as what changes. The builder keeps its suppliers, negotiated rates, quality checks, credit terms and the right to override any allocation. The supplier keeps its customers and its price floor, with no exclusivity and no bidding war. Zelleo does not buy, resell, lend or hold stock.
The workflow
One delivery, end to end, under this approach:
- The builder updates its construction programme as usual.
- Zelleo detects that a date has moved and works out the material affected.
- The requirement goes to the approved supplier panel at the same time.
- Each supplier answers inside its own rules: accept, counter or decline.
- Offers inside the builder’s limits are accepted; anything outside them is escalated to a person with the evidence attached.
- The transporter is matched to the accepted delivery slot.
- The delivery is tracked to the site gate and checked in against the order.
- What arrived goes back into the schedule, so the next requirement is computed from what actually happened.
Each party touches the flow only where a decision is theirs: the builder sets limits and approves exceptions, the supplier sets its floor and its rules, and the transporter confirms the slot.
Outcomes it is designed to improve
These are the measures a pilot would track, each against the participant’s own prior records rather than a forecast.
| Measure | Who feels it | How it is measured |
|---|---|---|
| Slip per pour window | Builder | Planned against actual pour dates on the trade in scope |
| Time from requirement to confirmed order | Builder and supplier | Timestamp of the schedule change against the confirmed commitment |
| Waste above the normal allowance | Builder | Quantity ordered against quantity used, set with the builder’s own quantity surveyor |
| Crew idle hours | Builder | Hours logged waiting for material |
| Part-loads and empty running | Supplier and transporter | Dispatch records for the corridor in scope |
| Time to settle a disputed delivery | All three | Days from dispute raised to dispute closed |
What exists and what is planned
| Capability | Status |
|---|---|
| Reading the construction programme and computing material need | Included in the pilot scope |
| Asking the approved supplier panel at once, within written limits | Included in the pilot scope |
| Allocation with the reasons shown, including to suppliers that lose | Included in the pilot scope |
| Matching freight to the accepted delivery slot | Included in the pilot scope |
| One shared record of each commitment and delivery | Included in the pilot scope |
| Gate, weighbridge and delivery documents on one timeline for disputes | Planned |
| Matching return loads so trucks run full in both directions | Planned |
| Agent-to-agent exchange with other firms’ agents on the open A2A standard | Planned; not offered today |
Scope and limits
- The approach depends on a schedule that is kept digitally. Where a yard is not digitised, a clerk confirms slots by hand while the system learns its rules.
- Every agent acts only within limits a business has written. Pricing below a floor, payments and sharing data outside the firm stay with a person.
- Data carries its age. An agent will not commit against stock or schedule information that has gone stale; it says which source is out of date.
- The first deployment is deliberately narrow: one project, one high-reorder trade such as steel or aggregates, and one delivery corridor, run beside the existing process.
- Agent-to-agent exchange between firms is being standardised in public. Zelleo intends to apply that standard rather than invent one, and treats it as a direction rather than a current capability.
Sources
- Construction Industry Institute, RS-153: rework at about 5% of project cost on average, 12–15% on a poorly run job.
- CPWD Delhi Schedule of Rates (DSR): standard wastage allowances in rate analysis.
- NITI Aayog and RMI: up to 40% of truck time in India runs empty.
- The workflow, measures and capability status above describe Zelleo’s proposed approach and the measures a pilot would use.