The question usually reaches the owner as a grumble. A bay welder hears that the erection gang drew extra cash for a fortnight at a cement plant's kiln shed. He asks why. Nobody can explain the figure, because the owner settled it by phone with the gang leader. The outstation men, for their part, think the shed has it easy: home every night, a ceiling fan, chai at fixed times.
Both sides are partly right, and that is the clue. Most shops blend two different payments into one informal number. Wage pays for skill. Outstation money pays for being away: a lodge cot, a dhaba thali, a twelve-hour day waiting on a pick-and-carry crane. Split those into separate lines and most of the heat goes out of the argument.
Pay the grade, not the location
Start with one wage ladder. A grade-two fitter tacking cleats in the bay and a grade-two fitter bolting a mezzanine at a godown earn the same basic. If outstation fitters carry a higher basic, bay fitters chase postings for the pay alone. Worse, the erector then refuses to come back indoors. Grading welders and fitters by a trade test, as described for sheet metal and fabrication units, gives you that ladder.
A crew lead who plans the erection, deals with the customer's engineer and signs off the punch list holds a bigger job. Pay that as a role, with its own grade. Do not hide it inside an inflated daily allowance.
What the outstation allowance covers
- Batta per night away: a stated amount for each night spent outside home, one figure for all grades or two bands at most.
- Travel: bus or rail tickets booked by the office, or fares repaid against the stub. Sleeper class or seater bus, written down once.
- Lodging and boarding: either the company books the lodge and pays the mess, or it pays a fixed boarding sum. Never a mix improvised on site.
- Local conveyance: the shared jeep or auto between lodge and site, repaid against a one-line daily note.
- Tools and protective kit: harnesses, grinders, slings and gloves leave on a checklist and come back on the same list.
Hours, travel days and the weekly off
Site days run long and uneven. A plant shutdown may allow welding only at night. A hired mobile crane may turn up at noon and stay till ten. Decide in advance when a site day starts. Many owners count from the customer's security gate, not the lodge. Waiting for the crane, a hot-work permit or a missing crate of anchor bolts then counts as duty.
Travel days need their own line. One workable rule pays a journey day as a normal day plus batta, without overtime. Use one rule for mobilisation and demobilisation alike, by sleeper berth or overnight bus.
Weekly offs slip outstation because crews want to finish and go home. Let them bank the off and take it on return. Record each banked day in the site diary, because unrecorded offs turn into disputes months later.
Keep the bay in the picture
Resentment rarely comes from the allowance itself. It comes from guessing. Once the sheet hangs on the bay notice board and the supervisor reads it out at the morning huddle, a welder can see batta is paid for nights away. It stops looking like a reward for favourites. Three habits help further.
- Roster outstation postings. Keep a simple turn list so one gang is not always sent and another always held back.
- Credit the workshop for cover. While a crew is away, the bay carries its load. First pick of the next Saturday off, or a small cover payment for that month, shows the load was noticed.
- Thank both teams on one job. When the mezzanine or shed is handed over, the people who cut, drilled and welded it in the yard hear the customer's comment too.
Attendance and advances, step by step
- 1
Daily sheet at site
The crew lead writes names, start and finish times. The customer's engineer countersigns, and a photo reaches the office each evening.
- 2
Advance against a form
Each cash or bank advance is recorded with amount, purpose and the person answerable for it.
- 3
Vouchers within a week
Tickets, lodge bills and conveyance notes settle the advance. A missing receipt goes on a short signed note instead.
- 4
Batta in the next payroll
Worked out from the signed sheets and shown as its own payslip line, never folded into overtime.
- 5
Close the posting
Tools counted back in, the site diary filed, and one line from the crew on the lodge, food and site conditions.
Follow-on questions owners ask
Should site work carry a higher grade? Only when the work itself needs more skill, such as rigging signals or welding at height. Otherwise keep the grade and let the allowance do its job.
What about a lump sum for the whole job? It feels simpler, yet it hides the difference between a smooth fortnight and one that drags into a third week. Daily batta tracks the real time away.
What if the customer's site runs a seven-day week? Then banked offs and their recording matter even more, and the site rotation and leave rules for structural steel fabricators show how a posting length can be capped.
Where to start
Begin by listing each erection deal struck since the monsoon, with who received what. The spread exposes the problem faster than any survey. Then draft the one-page sheet, read it out at both bay and site, and fold it into your wider pay and rewards structure. The pattern behind the grumbling is set out in why site and workshop staff end up treated differently. For help drafting the sheet and the grade ladder, send us the details.
