Site diaries
and photos
01Dated as they happen, with trades on site and the weather captured. The contemporaneous evidence the whole claim later rests on.
Written on the dayLive
For site managers
The record that
The record that
stands up eighteen
months later.
A site manager's real exposure is not today's problem. It is the argument in a year's time about what happened on a Tuesday, when the only evidence is a photograph on somebody's old phone and a memory that has already been contradicted twice. Unibuild builds the contemporaneous record as a by-product of running the site: diaries dated when they happen, photographs approved before they publish, the trades on site logged daily and the weather captured with them.
67 tables carry the job
trades on site logged daily
photos approved first
weather captured
The week you actually have
Nobody writes the diary
for the diary. They write it
for the claim.
Site records get skipped because the benefit arrives months after the effort. The only fix is to make recording take less time than not recording.
- The diary is dated when it happens
- Written on the day, against the job, with the trades on site and the weather attached. A diary reconstructed at the end of the month is worth very little in a dispute; one written contemporaneously is worth a great deal, and the difference is entirely about when it was created.
- Photographs are approved before they publish
- Progress photographs go through an approval step rather than straight onto the client's screen, so what your client sees is what you intended them to see. The record is complete internally; the publication is deliberate.
- Variations carry their evidence
- The instruction, the photographs, the day works and the hours attach to the variation itself rather than living in an email thread that nobody can find when it matters. That is the difference between a claim and an argument.
- Permits and RAMS where the work is
- Permits to work, RAMS signed by the operatives who are doing the job, toolbox talks signed on a phone at the point of delivery. The paperwork exists because the work was done, rather than being assembled afterwards for an audit.
- Hours you approve rather than decipher
- Operatives punch in against the job by scanning a poster at the gate. What reaches you is a set of hours already attributed, with a photograph and a server-written timestamp, to approve or query, not a pile of handwriting to interpret on a Friday.
What you would use on site
Six parts of the platform a site manager
touches, and when.
Site diaries
01Permits
to work
02Hot work, confined space and safe isolation, recorded with the points of isolation and earthing identified, signed at the point of issue.
Signed where it happensLive
RAMS and
toolbox talks
03Risk assessments and method statements per activity, signed by the operatives doing the work, on the phone in front of them.
Signed, not filedLive
Day works and
variations
04Raised on site with the evidence attached, so the instruction and what it actually cost stay joined together.
Claim, not argumentLive
Labour
planning
05Who is where next week, against the jobs that need them, so the resource conversation happens before Monday rather than on it.
Before MondayLive
The client
portal
06Read-mostly, project-scoped, showing your client what you have approved for them to see. Fewer status calls, on purpose.
Read-mostlyLive
Asked on site
What a site manager
asks before agreeing
to run it.
Will my lads actually use it?+
There is nothing for them to download and no password for the clock-in. They open the phone camera, point it at a laminated QR poster on the site board, and the page opens. It works on any iPhone or Android made in the last decade. The less there is to adopt, the less there is to refuse.
Can somebody clock in without being on site?+
It is made harder, and it is worth being precise about how. The photograph is required, the location is recorded on the punch, the IP is logged, and the time is written by our server rather than read from the phone, so it cannot be back-dated. The office sees the punch at the same instant the operative sees the confirm screen. What it is not is a geofence: the location is shown to you as a map link before you approve, and a punch made away from site is not rejected automatically. A distance check against your site boundaries is straightforward tailoring if you want one.
How long does the diary take to write?+
Less than the version you are not writing at the moment, which is the honest comparison. Trades on site and weather are captured rather than typed, photographs attach from the phone, and the entry is dated when it is made. What you add is the narrative, which is the part only you can write, and the part a claim actually turns on.
Does the client see everything?+
No. The client portal is read-mostly and scoped to their project, and progress photographs go through an approval step before they publish. What your client sees is what you approved for them to see.
What if I am running four jobs at once?+
Every record hangs off a job, so the diary, the photographs, the permits, the hours and the variations are already separated by job rather than merged into one site inbox. Labour planning shows who is where across all of them, which is usually the question behind the question.
The rest of the firm
Not the person who will use it most?
The same platform, described for the job each person actually does. Every one of them is a different set of pages switched on, granted per person, not a different product.
Further reading
Two things that decide whether the paperwork survives contact with the site.
- RAMS that hold up What an inspector is actually looking for in a risk assessment and method statement, and the difference between a document that exists and one that is doing its job.
- Why field rollouts stall in week three Most site software is not rejected. It is quietly outlived by the paper route nobody switched off. What the firms that got it to stick did differently.
Next step
Bring the variation