If you could keep only one document to reconstruct what happened on a project, it would be the daily report. The schedule records what should have happened. The daily report records what did. That gap is the entire reason it works as evidence when a change order is questioned.
More than an administrative obligation
Treated as a form to be filled in, a daily report is worth little. Written properly, it is the document that explains the context a change occurred in:
- activities performed and where
- crews mobilised
- weather conditions
- interferences with other trades
- stoppages and their causes
- access restrictions
- materials that arrived, or did not
- instructions received in the field
- any other relevant event that day
Record facts, not conclusions
The most useful discipline in a daily report is to write only what an observer could verify. Compare:
| Conclusion (weak) | Fact (strong) |
|---|---|
| The client delayed the whole job. | At 9:15 the crew had no access to the work area, waiting for release by the client. Work started at 13:40. |
| Additional work performed. | Installed 42 additional linear feet of metal framing on the east façade per instruction received at the 10:20 field meeting. |
The second column states what happened and lets the reader draw the conclusion. The first states the conclusion and gives the reader nothing to check — which is exactly the kind of entry that gets dismissed as opinion when the claim is examined.
Record what usually gets forgotten
Small daily events are what explain large impacts weeks later. Where they affect the work, capture:
- areas that were unavailable
- time spent waiting for inspections
- changes in sequence
- rework
- removal of existing work
- interferences between trades
- late material deliveries
- requests received in the field
- client visits and what was discussed
These entries are what demonstrate why an activity consumed more time or more resource than planned — a question that is nearly impossible to answer convincingly after the fact.
Photographs complete the record
Before taking a photograph, ask one question: if someone looks at this image in six months, will they understand what I am showing them? If the answer is no, take another angle.
Where possible the images should let a reader identify the location, the existing condition, the change performed, the approximate scale of the work, any interferences, and the sequence. A single photograph rarely explains a change order. A short series usually does:
- the original condition
- the request or instruction
- the start of execution
- progress
- the completed work
Organise them consistently — by date, project, area, trade and the change they belong to. On a project that produces thousands of images, the difference between organised and unorganised is hours of searching at exactly the moment you are under time pressure.
Complete the report the same day
Memory is a limited instrument. The longer the gap between the work and the writing, the more detail is lost and the more inconsistencies appear between records that should agree. Finishing the report daily is what keeps it precise enough to be useful.
Where the extra work is priced on time and materials, the daily report sits alongside the T&M tag. And the obligation that usually comes before either of them is the change order notice.
Field notes, photos and flags in one record you can attach to a change order. See how it works.
See how it works