Turning every jackhammer, every pour, every hour on site into a searchable event
The problem
ODEI's platform tracked construction sites, but only at the scale of large events, a concrete pour, a delivery, a milestone. Everything smaller than that was invisible to the system. Someone grabbing a jackhammer for an afternoon, a drill sitting unused for two weeks, a crew running low on a specific tool, none of it existed anywhere except in memory or a paper log passed between foremen.
That gap made two things impossible: knowing which tools were actually pulling their weight on site, and reconstructing what happened on a given day without asking someone who was there.
Deciding what was worth recording
Before designing any screen, I had to decide what actually deserved a permanent record. Not everything happening on site is worth logging, too much noise buries the signal. I focused on the factors that would matter later: who used what and for how long, damage to equipment, and the moment something entered or left the site. Every field in the event form traces back to one of those.
Drawing on Viver Mais
I had already worked on a real construction site with Cooperativa Habitacional Viver Mais, and that experience shaped how I approached stock. I knew from being there what actually goes wrong, material that goes missing without anyone noticing, surplus nobody accounts for, tools that quietly disappear between crews. I designed the event log around catching exactly that, not stock control in the abstract, but the specific ways it fails on a real site.
The solution
A worker logs what they took, attaches a photo of it in use, and confirms who, where and when. Every action becomes a timestamped event on a colour-coded timeline, searchable by site, item or person, with a detail card for each one showing the operator, the equipment, and the exact time it happened.
Completed
Assigned
Acquisition
log an event: The entry point for a worker to record what they took, attaching a photo as proof of use rather than relying on a text description alone.
filter: Narrow the timeline by site, item or team, so a manager checking on one crew is not scrolling through every other site's activity to find them.
timeline: Every event on site laid out chronologically, colour-coded by type, with a detail card showing operator, equipment and exact timestamp for whichever event is selected.
event detail form: The structured record behind every card on the timeline, item, site, operator, date and notes, kept consistent so the data stays usable later, not just readable in the moment.
confirm additional need: A checkpoint asking whether this event implies a follow-up request, more material, a replacement tool, so nothing gets logged and forgotten. ]
What this enables
Demand tracking
Which tools are in constant use, and which sit idle
Usage duration
How long each tool actually stays in use per event
Inventory accuracy
Cost and stock tracking grounded in real logged events
Full event reconstruction
Bigger events, like a pour, shown with photos and time spent
Defending it live, to CEOs who design
This was not a deck sent over email. I had to present the concept live and defend every decision in the room, in front of ODEI's CEOs, who are designers themselves. There was no hiding behind polish, every choice needed a reason that held up to people who understood the craft as well as I did.
Outcome
A NEW PROJECT
No published metric yet, the system was approved and greenlit on the strength of the design itself
What I'd do differently
I would develop the idea further. As a freelancer working on one piece of a larger product, I never had the time to sit with the whole system the way I would have liked.