The Blueprint Challenge · the flow

Four stamps and a phone call

You are a controller. Twenty-four costs have already hit the books. Before any of them can show up in your reports, four other desks each stamp one field on it. This page shows that mechanism, then the loop you play at each desk, then the call. Read it in ten minutes; try the questions before opening the answers.

1. How one cost becomes a report

A posting is one line of cost. Its amount never changes. What changes is the four stamps on it, and a report can only filter by a stamp. The posting's name is not a stamp: "Additional concrete, substation" tells a human a lot and a report nothing.

One posting, four desks, four stamps. In the game you sit at each desk in turn and stamp the postings the previous team got wrong. On the right, every report a stakeholder could ask for is a filter on one of the four stamps.

The words you will meet, in plain English first

Posting: One line of cost that already hit the books. Its amount is a fact and never moves.
Phase: A piece of project work (WBS element). Cost on a phase is building the plant.
Department: A team that holds a budget (cost center). Cost on a department is running something, not building it.
What was bought: Purchasing's label (material group). It says what the thing is, never where it went or who it was for.
Account: How the cost is treated (G/L account). Capital means it becomes part of an asset; expense means it is used up now. Your company's policy card decides.
Settles to: Where a finished phase's cost ends up (settlement receiver). "Construction closeout" means it becomes the plant. "Nobody" means it stays where it is.
Accrual: Cost you owe but have not been invoiced for yet. It belongs with the work it is for.
Need: A report someone must be able to run. It is served when one stamp picks out exactly the right postings and nothing else.

2. A desk, as you play it

Every desk is the same loop. You see the desk's report with the previous team's number on it. You get an inbox of about six flagged postings. For each one you pick from one dropdown. After every pick the checklist answers. When every must is green, the same report shows your number, and the desk is done.

The loop at every desk. The only thing that differs between desks is which stamp the dropdown sets and which need the checklist watches. Nothing is typed except a reason when you create something.

3. The call

After desk 4 your model is complete and a stakeholder calls with the one report your company's model was built to struggle with. Three options are offered. The first is always the tempting structural one (create a new phase). Comparing an option shows what it costs; you must compare two before you can choose.

The call. The test reads the total off your report; you never type a number. A change after a pass means test again. Finishing freezes the model and sends it to the board.

4. The whole session, and what winning means

Step	What you do	Done when	Minutes
Desk 1 · Project Systems	Put flagged postings on the phase where the work happened	Foundation work sits together (and interconnection, if your card keeps it apart)	14
Desk 2 · Purchasing	Say what was bought; log or create where nothing fits	Rented plant is one clean group	14
Desk 3 · Accounting	Set the account under your policy card	Building each plant is on a capital account, under your policy	14
Desk 4 · Controlling	Point finished phases at closeout; put running cost with its budget holder; answer three questions with the report builder	Every finished phase settles to closeout, nothing else does	16
The call	Compare, choose, change, test	The test passes and you finish	20
The board	Four columns, one row per desk; each model read against every card	Everyone is done	15

Everyone can win. There is no score and nothing is locked. A desk is done when its must is green and every posting has a value or an owner. A team is done when its call is finished. The room wins when all four teams are done. At the board, four different models all turn out correct for their own policy card, and none is correct for all four. That is the lesson: there is a best way to align your master data, and it depends on what your company needs.

5. Follow it yourself: Company A

Your policy card: Contractors who build the plant: we expense them. All four sites are run by one regional team. Grid interconnection is part of the plant. At each desk, decide before you open the answer. The checklist in the real game would tell you after each move; here the answer tells you after the desk.

Desk 1 · Where does the work happen?

The Civil construction report shows 140,000. Your inbox holds six postings. Three of them are on a phase where their work did not happen. The card lets you ask the site office once.

Look at these three: t18 Additional concrete, substation · on Foundation, t23 Accrued contractor invoice, Gamma · on Civil, t17 Crane rental, Alpha · on Civil. Where did each piece of work actually happen?

Answer, and the concept

Ask the site. It says: the crane set the switchgear in Alpha's interconnection yard, the substation pour is part of the grid interconnection, and the accrual is October's bill for the Gamma foundation contractor. So t17 and t18 go on Grid interconnection and t23 goes on Foundation installation, with the contractor it accrues for. Log t21 (admin supplies) as not yours: Procurement owns it. Leave t03 and t16 alone. Civil goes from 140,000 to 77,000.

Concept. An accrual is cost you owe for work already done. It follows the work, not the department that will pay the invoice. And a posting's name can lie: "concrete" sounds like foundations until someone tells you which bay it was poured for.

Desk 2 · What was bought?

The rented plant report shows 126,000 on two projects. Purchasing confirms that t20 Operations equipment repair is a repair, not a rental, and that t06 Drainage materials is pipe and gravel, not concrete. t19 Routine maintenance materials is also coded as concrete. No "repair" group exists yet, and no "pipe" group ever will.

What do you do with t20? And with t06 and t19?

Answer, and the concept

t20: "Needs a new one". Create Repair services with a reason, then put t20 on it. (Logging it for purchasing would also clear the must; creating is the cleaner model.) t06 and t19: nothing fits, so log both for Procurement. Rented plant drops to 112,000. The concrete group is now only concrete.

Concept. A material group says what a thing is, never where it went or who it was for. When no group fits, an honest empty field with an owner's name is better than a wrong label. Wrong labels are what make reports lie later.

Desk 3 · How is it accounted?

The capital cost of Solar Gamma shows 222,000. Gamma Block 1 has been running since September. The group each posting sits in suggested an account, but that is a guess. Your card says contractors who build the plant are expensed.

Which of these should not be on a capital account: t19 Routine maintenance materials, Gamma · Construction in progress, t03 Foundation contractor · External services expense, t14 Environmental assessment, Beta · External services expense (ordered before Beta's go decision)?

Answer, and the concept

t19 is running cost on a plant that is already operating: it goes on Repairs and maintenance expense, and Gamma's capital cost drops to 210,000. t03 stays expensed because your card says so (Company B's card would capitalize it). t14 stays expensed because it was before the go decision. Also put t20 on the repairs account and t24, a valuer's fee, on External services expense instead of impairment.

Concept. Capital means the cost becomes part of an asset you will depreciate over years. Expense means it is used up now. Building a plant is capital; running it is expense; development work counts as capital only after the company decides to go ahead. Which side a contractor lands on is policy, and policy differs by company. That is why four teams end with four correct answers.

Desk 4 · Where does it end up, and whose is it?

Cost designated to closeout shows 824,000: only three phases point at Construction closeout. Site preparation, Commissioning and Project development point at nobody. Your card says interconnection is part of the plant and one regional team runs all sites.

Which phases should point at closeout? Where do t19 and t20, the running costs, belong? What about t24 Asset impairment review?

Answer, and the concept

Every phase that built the plant settles to closeout: add Site preparation, Commissioning and Project development, and Grid interconnection too because your card keeps it in the plant. Closeout rises to 1,128,000. t19 and t20 stay on the Regional operations team, which holds every site's budget on your card. Log t24 as not yours: a valuer's fee is head-office cost, Corporate finance owns it. Then lay out one report with phase or department in the rows and the engine answers the three shared questions off it: total 1,173,000, on departments 35,000, on Civil 77,000.

Concept. Settlement is a relationship, not a posting. Pointing a phase at closeout does not move any money; it declares that this cost becomes the asset when the phase is finished. Running cost never settles anywhere. It lives on the cost center of whoever holds the budget.

The call · Purchasing wants concrete by project and phase

Three options: create a Concrete phase and move all concrete onto it; report what was bought by project and phase as the model stands; take pipe and maintenance out of the concrete group first, then report. Purchasing says they do not want a new phase. Compare two. Which do you choose, and how do you lay out the report?

Answer, and the concept

Comparing the Concrete phase shows its cost: it moves postings off the phases where the work happened, and every phase total breaks. The sound option is the third. If you cleaned the concrete group at desk 2 the model is already right, and the call is about the report: rows project and phase, filter what was bought = Ready-mix concrete, measure actual. The test reads 152,000 on two postings and passes on all four checks. Finish. The engine writes your presentation: what was wrong, what you changed, what you chose, and which of the other three cards your model still cannot serve.

Concept. A new phase is the wrong fix for a wrong label. Phases say where work happened; groups say what was bought. When a report is hard to get, ask which stamp is lying before you build a new place to put things.

6. Play it, and see a full play

Play it yourself: pick a company, sit at the four desks, take the call. It runs on your laptop and remembers where you were. The results of a full play show, desk by desk, the number the previous team left and the number a careful team produced, for all four companies, with the board at the end.

Every single move of that play, with the checklist after each one, is in the full playthrough. It is long on purpose: it is the game played to the end, every number computed by the engine. Use it when you want to check one desk, not to read through.