The rain delayed us is only checkable if somebody wrote the rain down.
Three months after it happened, everything on your build is somebody’s recollection against somebody else’s. The bricklayer says they were stood down in the wind. The scaffolder says they were never asked. This is where the day goes at the time, in about a minute, so that it is still an answer in month twenty.
Why it is not a notebook
A pad answers one question: what did I write on the fourth of November. Here the same day is recorded on nine strands, so the questions you will actually be asked are each one press, and the answer is every day at once.
Step 1 of 7
Record the day in about a minute
The weather is a sentence rather than a dropdown, because dry, showers, rain would refuse the entry that actually answers a claim for more time: froze hard overnight, thawed by ten, dig still full of water from Tuesday.
It can be dry overhead and the ground still unworkable, and that difference is the whole argument.
Step 2 of 7
Who was on site
Every day that carries labour, read as one list: two bricklayers, sent home at eleven.
That row and the wind on the same day are what an application for payment gets read against. Together they are a week you can account for.
Step 3 of 7
What arrived, and when
Twelve packs of blocks landed and one of them was broken. Written on the day, that is a credit. Remembered in March, it is a conversation you lose.
Step 4 of 7
Who came, and what for
The engineer was on site twice about the same rear corner. Read as a list, that is not a diary entry any more: it is a design problem with a date on it, and it was visible without anybody looking for it.
Step 5 of 7
Who had been briefed
If something goes wrong on your site, the question is who had been briefed and when the scaffold was last checked.
That is the same record as the safety paperwork, met from the other side: the plan says what was supposed to happen and the diary says what did.
Step 6 of 7
What is waiting on you
A variation submitted and not yet priced is money you have not agreed to and may already be paying for. On this reading it is one line with a date, and it stops being something you were going to deal with.
Step 7 of 7
Two years in two lines
Every reading rolls up to the year, the month, the week or the day. You open the part you are being asked about and leave the rest shut, which is what makes a two-year record usable at all.
Nothing here scores you. A week with nothing on it shows as a week with nothing on it.
And the photographs go on the day, not in a folder
A photograph of an open trench is worth nothing in a folder called Photos. It is worth something when it is pinned to the day it was taken and says where on the site it was: the drainage run before backfill, the services under the slab, the wall before it was closed up.
Fifteen years from now somebody owns this home and wants to put a door where a beam might be. That photograph, on that day, with that location on it, is the answer.
What you get out
How much of it
A day, a week, a month or a year. Pick any date inside the period you want.
Who it is for
Your own record keeps everybody’s contact details on it. The version you send carries your letterhead and takes theirs off.
The photographs
Off unless you ask, because a month with photographs in it can be too large to email.
The same October sent to your bank, your insurer and your bricklayer should not carry the same contact details. The version you send goes out on your letterhead with other people’s numbers taken off it. The version you keep has everything on it.