The site daily log: what to record every day and why

In February the client writes that the site is three weeks behind and that it will deduct a penalty. The contractor replies that it rained eleven days in November, that the rebar arrived late and that it waited a week for an answer from the designer. All of that may be true, but the contractor has to be able to show it.

If there is a daily log that says, for each of those days, what the weather was, who was on site and why the formwork crew stood idle, the conversation is short. If there is not, what remains is memory, and memory is easy to dispute.

That is why the daily log is kept every day, and in a way that does not burden the person filling it in.

What goes into the daily record

The same things are recorded on a small site and on a large one, only the volume differs.

Weather. What it was, minimum and maximum temperature, precipitation. It matters for concrete, for plaster, for insulation and for any dispute over whether work was possible. "Rain" is not enough. "Rain from 9 to 14, 12 mm, slab pour postponed" does the job.

People. Which crews were on site, from which company, how many people and for how many hours. This is how you later see whether the subcontractor really kept eight bricklayers on site, as it claims, or whether three came.

Equipment. Which machines were on the site and how long they worked. A crane that stands idle all day because there is nothing to lift is also a record: somebody pays for the standing time.

Work performed. What was finished today and where. The more exact the place (section, floor, axis), the more useful the record months later.

Deliveries. What arrived, how much and from whom. This also shows what should have come and did not.

Visits. Construction supervision, client oversight, the designer, the labour inspectorate. Who came, what they looked at, what they said.

Events and stoppages. Downtime and its causes, incidents, safety briefings held, an order to stop work. This is the part that is most often missing and most often asked for.

Photos. A few shots of the day, taken on the spot. A photo of the reinforcement before the pour cannot be taken the next day.

Who keeps it and who accepts it

It is kept by the person who is on site from morning to evening. On most sites that is the site manager. It is not a job for the office: from there you see what was planned, and the log has to say what happened.

It is good for the record to pass through a second person. The project manager or the managing director reviews and approves it, after which it is not touched again. A log that can be corrected at any time proves nothing, because nobody knows when it was written.

On sites with client oversight one more thing helps: the log is shown to the other side regularly and, when they agree, signed by them too. A record that the client has seen every week and has not challenged is hard to challenge at the end.

What the Bulgarian rules say

This part is not legal advice.

Ordinance No. 3 of 31 July 2003 on drawing up certificates and protocols during construction lists in Art. 7, para. 3 the certificates and protocols drawn up on a construction site. A form for a general daily log is not among them. The mandatory book is the order book (Art. 7, para. 3, item 4, Annex 4): stitched, with numbered pages, certified by the person exercising construction supervision, and for fifth-category sites by the site manager. It holds the instructions and orders of authorised persons and of the control bodies. It is not a place for everyday notes.

Logs do appear in the ordinance all the same. The form of the certificate for acceptance of the structure (Annex 14) lists the documents the commission reviews, and among them are "logs of the work performed", next to the order book and the certificates and protocols drawn up. In other words, when the time for the Annex 14 certificate comes, the contractor is expected to have such records.

Beyond that, the daily log is most often required by the contract. Before you start a site, read exactly what it says: who keeps it, how often it is presented to the client and in what form. If the contract is silent, keep it anyway: you will need it whether or not anyone asked for it.

How it helps in a dispute

Disputes on a construction site are of two kinds: over time and over money. The daily log helps with both.

In a delay, the question is the cause and whose it is. Bad weather, a late delivery, no access to the work front, a stoppage ordered by the supervision, waiting for an answer from the designer: each of these is a day or a week, and the contract usually has a procedure for extending the deadline because of them. That procedure almost always asks for proof from the day itself. The daily log is exactly that, provided it was kept at the time.

In extra work, the question is what was done outside the contract, by whom and over how much time. A record like "4 people, 6 hours, breaking out and re-pouring the stair flight on the designer's instruction, entered in the order book on the same date" is a basis for a conversation about an amendment. Without it all that remains is the claim "we worked extra".

There is a third benefit. When a subcontractor submits a statement of completed work (the Annex 19 form), the daily log shows whether its people were on site on the days it is claiming payment for.

Common gaps

The most common is backdating. Five logs filled in on a Friday afternoon look like copies of each other, and it usually shows.

The second is the generic record. "Work proceeding on schedule" says nothing. If a record does not answer who, where and how much, it is better to be short but specific.

The third is writing only the good days. A day when no work was done also needs a record: that is precisely when it has to say why.

Visits are often missing too. The supervision came by, said something out loud, and nobody wrote it down. Two months later one side remembers that it allowed it, the other that it forbade it.

And last, photos with no link to the day. A thousand shots on the site manager's phone are not an archive. A photo has value when it sits next to the record for the same date.

What the daily log looks like in Construction Team

In Construction Team, daily logs are in the Field section. The rule is one: one daily log per site per day. The system does not let you create a second one for the same date, so there are never two versions of the same day.

The form is arranged in several sections:

• Weather conditions - weather (sunny, rain, snow, fog and so on), minimum and maximum temperature, precipitation in millimetres and notes. When you pick a site and a date, the system tries to fill in the weather by itself from the site's location. Whatever you entered by hand is not overwritten.
• Crews and workers - for each crew: subcontractor, trade, number of workers and hours worked. The total number of workers and hours for the day is calculated automatically.
• Materials delivered - material, quantity, unit and supplier.
• Equipment on site - a machine from the equipment register, or free text for third-party and one-off equipment. For a machine from the register you enter its use in hours or in days.
• Day narrative - separate fields for work performed, delays and downtime, safety and incidents, visitors and other notes.
• Photos - uploaded at creation or later, and kept with the log for the same date.

On most sites the crews and machines today are the same as yesterday. The "Copy from previous day" button carries them over from the last log, and you only fix the differences. Materials and weather are entered anew, because they change every day.

The daily log has three statuses: Draft, Submitted and Approved. A draft is edited freely. With "Submit" it goes for review, and approval needs a separate permission, so the person who writes and the person who accepts can be different people. An approved log is locked for editing and the site team gets a notification. Only a draft can be deleted.

From the log's detail page you download an A4 PDF with the company letterhead: weather, crews with the total number of workers and hours, materials delivered, equipment, the day narrative and photos. At the bottom there are three signature fields: Prepared by, Approved by and Site supervision. The third is left blank on purpose and is signed on site if you have agreed that the client sees the log.

Under the record there is "Discussion", an internal thread for clarifications between colleagues. And when something appears in the log that looks like a bigger problem (a third day of downtime in a row, a recurring incident), the "Record as risk" button moves it to the risk register with the delays and safety notes filled in.

There is more about the module on the page about site daily logs.

Where it stops

The daily log in the system is not the order book and does not replace it. That stays on paper, stitched and certified, on the site.

Crews are recorded by headcount and hours, not by name. The hours of a specific worker are kept elsewhere, in timesheets.

Equipment use in the daily log is a quantity, without money. It is costed in the site's budget analysis, which sits behind a separate permission.

And the system does not know what happened on site. It keeps what someone recorded. If the delays field is empty, three months later it will turn out that there were no delays.

Where to start

Pick one site and one person. Agree that the log is filled in every day before leaving and approved by the next morning at the latest. The first week will take more time, then crews and machines are copied over and only the differences remain to be entered.

After a month, open any date and try to say what happened then. If the record answers, the daily log works.

Related articles

• Order book of a construction site - who writes in it and what
• Timesheets on a construction site - hours by site and by type of work
• Construction punch list - the other daily record from the site
• Risk management in construction - when what is in the log becomes a risk
• Subcontractor management - how a submitted statement is checked against the people on site