The importance of keeping construction daily logs for every site activity

Construction sites are chaotic. And even if it’s mostly controlled chaos, staying on top of everything is challenging for site managers.

While we have plenty of tools to get a general overview of projects and see how they should be progressing, we only have one that shows how they’re actually progressing: construction daily logs.

Let’s explore the importance of keeping construction and maintenance daily logs of every on-site activity.

Meet the simplest digital construction daily log app LB Site Diary

5 reasons you need to keep accurate construction daily logs

Your construction daily log is a living record of your project—it shows the details of each day’s progress. Daily reports are how everyone involved in the project tracks progress, performance, and productivity.

Skipping these logs increases your risk of a small issue becoming a massive one because no one documented it.

Your construction and maintenance daily log is crucial for:

• Protecting against disputes
• Tracking on-site activities
• Keeping stakeholders in the loop
• Improving productivity
• Minimising delays

1. Protect yourself from disputes

In the face of a dispute, you need a foolproof trail of documents to protect yourself and your company. Construction daily logs track everything that happens on your site, providing facts and insights about site conditions to disprove disputes.

By keeping a construction and maintenance daily log, you can:

• Prove due diligence by recording constraints and their resolutions
• Show that you communicated with stakeholders, clients, and contractors
• Provide proof of labour hours, materials used, etc.

If you ever feel that recording activities in your construction daily logs is too much of a hassle, think about the negative implications on your profit margin and reputation.

Free eBook: Quick guide to Lean practices for construction professionals

2. Keep track of work done

When it comes to the high complexity of construction projects, it’s impossible to track every on-site activity, material, contractor, and team. Construction daily logs act as a management tool to record all of the relevant information that you’ll need in the future.

Daily log-keeping can help you keep track of:

• How many workers you have on site
• Hours spent on different activities
• Potential constraints and weather forecasts
• Verbal agreements between contractors and clients
• Quality, health, safety, and environment (QHSE) information

Tracking all of this information in your construction and maintenance daily log gives you everything you need to do your job well.

3. Provide value to your clients

What’s the number-one thing your clients want to see while their project is under construction? The value you provide them. With tight deadlines and potential constraints around every corner, your clients want you to keep them in the loop.

Construction daily logs make it easy to show your clients the progress you’re making on their projects, the work you’ve completed, and the value of their investment.

Plus, your clients likely don’t know much about the construction process. Sharing your construction and maintenance daily log along with progress updates can help them understand what’s happening on the site.

4. Find ways to improve productivity

Efficient daily log-keeping is about more than recording on-site activities; you can boost the overall productivity of your projects by analysing your daily reports. So don’t just track the progress of your project—use your construction daily log to determine what is and isn’t working.

Improve on-site productivity with your construction logs by:

• Identifying the average time it takes teams to complete specific tasks to gain an accurate timeline for future planning
• Ensuring that each team completes work on time without interfering with the activities of other contractors
• Finding small, unobvious changes you can make to boost efficiency and cut costs by restructuring your workforce

More to read: How can a digital site diary improve on-site quality control?

5. Identify and reduce delays

A lack of communication and collaboration is a huge problem in the construction industry, causing projects to go over budget and miss deadlines. Without proper documentation and construction daily logs, the risk of misunderstandings that lead to delays rises, and communication becomes strained.

Every contractor and sub working on the project relies on the information in the construction and maintenance daily logs—inaccurate or missing logs mean they cannot work efficiently, and inefficient work leads to delays.

Your construction daily log shows why, how, and when changes occur and decisions are made; this enables everyone on-site to stay productive, maintain transparency, and, ultimately, reduce delays and unnecessary change orders.

Control your construction & maintenance daily log from anywhere

Tracking everything in your construction daily log isn’t always easy, but it can be simple.

Are you more likely to record on-site activities in your daily log if you have to constantly run information back and forth from the office, or if you can track and share reports instantly from the jobsite? If you’re like most site managers, you probably chose the latter.

So why aren’t you leveraging technology to create your construction and maintenance daily logs, secure proof of work, and gain real-time field insights?

Book your demo of LB Site Diary and discover the power of keeping a digital construction daily log.