Construction daily reporting is used to track and monitor the progress of an ongoing construction project. Usually, the job foreman, site manager or project manager fills in the registers, collecting input for each day of work and noting everything that happens on site. Construction daily reports can include a wide range of information, from weather conditions to personnel on site, materials received, equipment used and a general summary of the day’s activities. This also means including what got done and what, if anything, was delayed and why. In the old days, this information was all collected manually and stored in a three-ring binder, but the process has been largely digitalised.

Construction daily reports help keep a project on track and create a detailed archive of a project’s progress without relying on the memory of a project foreman compiling a week’s worth of project notes on a Friday afternoon. Most importantly, construction daily reports can help head off project disputes. The more detailed a register is, the better it will serve as evidence if the contractor ends up in court.

Procore’s Site Diary tool gives every project stakeholder access to information about a project’s progress without ever needing to visit the site. Construction daily reports automate much of the process – for example, automatically logging weather conditions so that site supervisors can focus their reporting on the major day-to-day happenings. Daily reports also add a layer of accountability since it keeps a detailed track of who was responsible for what. Site diaries also let project managers track planned versus actual costs to identify discrepancies. If there’s a change in management or other personnel, site diaries kept by the previous manager serve as a record of everything that’s gone on so far, so a job can pick up where it left off.

Procore’s Site Diary tool is much more sophisticated than simple site notes. It automates many aspects of the process of updating the register, freeing up supervisors to focus on other tasks. Within Procore, a supervisor can get a holistic view of a project with ease, thanks to its dynamic filtering and search capabilities. Everything from how many working hours were used over the last week to which subcontractors performed the work is easily accessible. Procore Site Diary lets you easily collect this information to share, report, print or export to a spreadsheet.

The three-ring binder had its time, but it’s being replaced by software like Procore’s Site Diary tool for obvious reasons. First, the information entered is automatically archived and saved across multiple servers, eliminating any chance of missing pages or illegible handwritten notes. The Site Diary tool is also tightly integrated with Microsoft Project and works with various scheduling software formats. Keeping registers in a digital format makes them easier to share and impossible to lose, and it ensures every stakeholder is working from the same up-to-date information.