Construction site management: what gets recorded in the field and who keeps it

On an average site, at least six things happen in a day that someone will later want proven: what was done, how many people worked, what was damaged, what the designer was asked, who approved the material and what was decided at the progress meeting. Usually each of them lives in a different place: a notebook with the site manager, a spreadsheet with the timekeeper, a chat with the subcontractors, an email with the designer. When the talk turns to delay or extra work, the records have to be pulled together from four places, and some of them are missing.

Every day: the daily log and photos

There is one daily log per project per day, and the system does not allow a second one for the same date. It holds the weather, the crews, the materials, the equipment and the work completed, and where needed also the downtime with its reasons. A log moves through three states: draft, submitted, approved. An approved log can no longer be changed, so a March entry cannot be corrected in May.

An equipment line can be linked to a machine from the register. The hours from the log then also count as that machine's utilization, without being entered twice. What exactly goes into the daily entry and why is covered in the article on the site daily log. The order book (заповедна книга, the official site record required in Bulgaria) is a different document, with a separate article.

Every field record (daily log, defect, RFI, inspection) has a "Photos" section. Files from the phone are shrunk to a sensible size before upload, and HEIC photos from an iPhone are converted to JPEG. Without coverage the photos wait in a queue on the device and upload when the connection is back and the app is open. The queue is for photos only: everything else in the record needs a connection.

More about the module: daily logs.

Every week: hours and work reports

Labor is reported by week, Monday to Sunday. Each employee fills in hours by project and task and submits the week for approval. People with approval rights get a notification and either accept the week or return it with a reason. A submitted and an approved week are locked, so hours do not change after approval.

Where work is paid on a piecework basis, there is a separate kind of report: quantities against a template of activities. The worker sees only his own rate and not the selling price, while the approver sees how much has already been approved for the same activity on the project before deciding. A draft act for the client can be assembled from the approved reports. How this labor is calculated is covered in the article on tracking labor on site, and the module has a timesheets page.

When there is a problem: defects, RFIs and submittals

Defects. Every defect is a record with a number built from the project code, a location (entrance, floor, room), an owner in the company, a contractor from among the subcontractors and a due date. It moves through "Open", "In progress", "Ready for review" and "Closed", and rejected work goes back for rework. A closed defect can be reopened. The list from a walk-through can be imported from Excel instead of being entered line by line. At night the system sends reminders for defects whose due date is approaching or has passed. Details are in the article on the punch list and on the module page.

Requests for information to the designer (RFIs). A question goes through draft, "Open", "Answered" and "Closed", and an unnecessary request can be voided. An RFI can also carry a cost and schedule impact. That way the designer's answer does not stay in someone's mailbox. There is more in the article on RFIs and on the module page.

Submittals. Materials and samples that need approval from the designer or the client have their own record. The decision is "approved", "approved as noted", "revise & resubmit" or "rejected". On a resubmission the revision gets a suffix number "-R1", "-R2" and so on, and the old version stays in the history. The module has a submittals page.

On a schedule: inspections, meetings, equipment

Inspections. The checklist is made once as a template and the inspections are created from it. An inspection goes through "scheduled", "in progress", "completed" and "closed", but it cannot be completed while any item is unscored. The result is the percentage of items passed, and for every failed item the system creates a defect in the punch list by itself. Module page: inspections.

Meetings. The agenda, the attendees and the minutes are recorded. Decisions from the minutes can be turned into project tasks with one action, so they do not stay only in the text. Module page: meetings.

Equipment. The register holds machines and equipment with the status "available", "on site", "in repair" or "out of service". A machine cannot be assigned to two projects at the same time, and a machine that is on a project cannot be deleted. Module page: equipment.

Drawings

A drawing is uploaded as a PDF or an image and pins are placed on it: to a defect, a task, an RFI or a note. A new version of the drawing does not lose the pins already placed. In practice a defect is not "in apartment 12, somewhere near the bathroom" but a point on the plan that anyone opening the record comes back to. More: drawings.

How it all connects

Records are attached to one another, so nothing is entered twice. An inspection that fails produces defects. A decision from a meeting becomes a task. Hours from the daily log go into the machine's utilization. A defect or an RFI can carry a cost and a delay, and the project manager can see that. Every record is tied to the project and the sub-object (entrance, floor, apartment) and supports discussion, photos and a change history showing who changed what and when.

Risks are kept separately, in a risk register: how to do it is described in the article on risk management in construction.

Where to start

With the daily log and the punch list. They are used every day, and at the next dispute there is already something to show. Timesheets, inspections and RFIs get added once the team is used to recording.