Building a plant surplus manifest before the clean-out

A clean-out is easier to price from a list than from a walkthrough. The list does not need to be elegant. It needs a location, a description, a size, a voltage class, a footage or count, and a condition note for every line, with a photograph that matches. Six columns and a phone camera will do the work, and neither takes any longer than the argument that follows a vague description.

We are usually asked to quote a plant surplus after the decision to empty the storehouse has already been made, which is the worst possible time to be building a record. The plants that get a useful number are the ones that start the manifest while the shelves are still full, when the person who ordered the cable is still reachable and the part numbers still mean something to somebody in the building.

Start at one end of the storehouse and work in a fixed direction. Aisle by aisle, bay by bay, shelf by shelf, marking each bay as you finish it. Memory produces a list that covers the large reels at the front and forgets the rack of small spools at the back, and the small spools are often where the unidentified material sits. The list is only worth having if it is complete, so the walk matters more than the writing.

Name every location in a way you can repeat out loud to someone standing in the aisle: aisle four, bay two, top shelf. Note the rack type as well, because a reel that needs a forklift and a reel one person can carry are different lots even when the cable on them is identical. If the storehouse already has a numbering scheme painted on the uprights, use it exactly as it appears.

Then walk the maintenance cribs, the electrical shop and the contractor cage by bench. Cable lives where the work happens as much as it lives in stores: partial reels under benches, offcuts in bins, service loops left from old jobs, spares ordered for a machine that has since been replaced. Record the bench rather than the room, so the material can be found again on the day someone comes to collect it. Half of a clean-out usually hides in these corners.

Every clean-out produces two streams. Reusable stock is identified, has footage on the tag, is dry and undamaged, and could go back into service somewhere. Recovery material is short, unidentified, damaged, obsolete or mixed, and its value is in the metal. Sorting on paper first saves sorting twice on the floor, and it lets whoever signs the manifest see plainly what is being sold and what is being recovered. A line is either stock or metal, and pretending otherwise helps nobody.

Obsolete part numbers belong in a category of their own. Cable ordered for a machine that no longer exists may still be perfectly good cable, and it may be a construction nobody catalogs now. Record the number exactly as printed, note the year if the label shows one, and leave the judgment about its market to the review. Spelling the number correctly matters, because that string is how a buyer goes looking for the specification.

Spares cages are the hardest part of any walk. They hold what nobody wanted to throw away, which is often what a buyer most wants to see, and the labels are usually a decade old. Count what is countable, photograph what is not, and leave sealed drums sealed on the day of the walk. Opening a cage for an inventory is a decision for the plant to make, not for the buyer to ask for.

Sorting on paper costs an afternoon. Sorting on the floor after the trucks arrive costs a week.