The site diary: what it must contain and why it protects you in disputes

What was done: short, concrete, by position — "substructure installation, 2nd floor, axes 4–7", not "we worked".

Who was there: the list of workers on site that day, including subcontractors. This ties directly to payroll and to responsibility.

From when to when: start and end of works on site — important for payroll and for proving the intensity of works.

Downtime, with reason and duration: three hours of rain, half a day waiting for material, a power cut. THIS is the most valuable part of the diary — downtime is the basis for deadline extensions and for charging waiting time, but only if recorded on the day it happened.

Visits and inspections: supervision, the investor, inspectors — who came, what they said, what was requested.

Photos: completed state, hidden works before closing up (wiring before plasterboard!), damage found on site.

Courts and experts give great weight to records created daily, at the time of the event — unlike reconstructions assembled months later for the purposes of a dispute. A diary kept properly, day by day, with photos, is practically impossible to contest.

A classic example: the investor activates penalties for a three-week delay. The contractor pulls the downtime total from the diary — 11 days of rain and wind documented on the day of the event, 6 days waiting for design changes with supervision visits recorded. The penalties fall. Without the diary, the same company pays.

The diary also protects against subcontractors: when it is recorded which subcontractor entered the job when and what they found, shifting responsibility for "who damaged whose work" stops being a matter of persuasion.

A paper diary on site is exposed to everything: rain, dust, the van, getting lost. It gets filled in "when there's time", which means in the evening from memory, which means incompletely.

Photos are separated from the record — in someone's phone, unmatched to day and position, unrecoverable when that worker leaves the company.

And most importantly: only the person physically holding a paper diary can see it. An owner running three sites has insight into none of them until arriving in person.

The foreman, at the end of the day, five minutes on the phone: what was done, who was there (the system itself suggests the workers who clocked in on that site that day), from–to, downtime, visits, a few photos. Done.

The record is in the office the same instant, tied to the site, searchable and indelible. In the evening the owner flips through the diaries of all sites in two minutes over coffee.

For the investor a tidy report is generated from the same data — without internal information like costs and rates — which looks professional and builds the trust that brings the next job.

The site diary is the only document created early enough to protect you — everything else is after-the-fact reconstruction nobody believes. Five minutes of daily discipline against tens of thousands of marks of risk per dispute: the maths is simple.

In our system the diary is built in alongside hours, tasks and photos — the foreman fills it in from the phone, and data the system already has (who was there, what was done) is pulled in automatically. See how it works on the company software page.