Attendance and work progress are the core. Beyond that: weather, delays and their causes, any incidents or near-misses, materials delivered, subcontractor activity, and verbal instructions given or received. The exact requirements vary by contract, but those categories cover standard site diary obligations across most Australian projects.
What are the minimum required fields?
Most contracts specify date, project name, site supervisor name, weather conditions, attendance record, and a description of work completed as baseline requirements.
Beyond those, incidents, delays, and variations should be logged as they occur. A daily report without delay records is a report that won't support an extension of time claim. A report without incident records is a WHS liability.
Check your specific contract. Principal contractors and large head contractors often have their own site diary requirements that go beyond the standard. Know what yours requires before you start logging.
Do I need to include weather?
Yes. Weather affects programme, safety, and the validity of many delay claims. Record conditions at the start of the day and update if they change significantly. A rain delay at 1pm is different from a full-day weather shutdown.
Temperature extremes matter too. Concrete pours, adhesives, and coatings all have temperature requirements. If you poured in 38 degree heat and there's later a defect, your diary entry showing the conditions provides essential context.
What about photos and evidence?
Photos aren't always contractually mandatory, but they change the quality of a daily report as evidence. A timestamped photo of completed formwork before concrete placement is harder to dispute than any written description.
For variations, photograph the existing condition before work starts and the result after. For delays, photograph whatever caused the delay: the missing materials, the weather-affected area, the flooded basement. Evidence made at the time is worth far more than anything written from memory later.
What should I record if something goes wrong on site?
Record the time, location, what happened, who was involved, what immediate action was taken, and who was notified. Do it at the time. Memory of incident details degrades fast, and exact timelines matter in investigations.
For WHS incidents, follow your site's incident reporting procedure as well as logging in the diary. The daily report is part of the record, not a replacement for formal incident reports, but an important contemporaneous account that often ends up as supporting evidence in any subsequent investigation or claim.
Verbal instructions
Any instruction given or received verbally on site should be logged immediately. "The project manager said to push the slab pour to Thursday." That's a programme change. If it doesn't make it into the diary, it didn't happen as far as the record is concerned. Disputes over verbal instructions are common. The diary is how you win them.
Subcontractor activity
Log which subcontractors were on site, what they were doing, and how many workers they had. If a subbie is underperforming, the record is how you document it. If there's a delay caused by a subcontractor, the diary is what supports the claim. Specific names and company names matter. "The sparkies" is weaker than "Apex Electrical, 3 workers, Level 2 fit-off."
What a strong entry looks like
A weak entry says "concrete delayed." A strong entry says "concrete pump booked for 0700, arrived 1045, foreman J. Mitchell confirmed with Readymix dispatch, 3.5 hours lost to ground floor columns." The information is the same. The utility is completely different.
- Time. When it happened, not "morning" or "afternoon"
- Names. Who was involved, who gave the instruction, who confirmed
- Quantities. Hours lost, metres completed, materials received
- Cause. Not just what happened, but why
- Action taken. What you did in response
How to make it sustainable
The detail above sounds like a lot. It isn't, when you log in real time rather than from memory. A voice entry at the moment something happens captures all of it in 15 seconds. The same information reconstructed at 5pm takes 10 minutes and loses the sharp edges.
The standard to aim for: if the project ends in a dispute two years from now and your diary is the only record of what happened on a given day, does it tell the full story? If yes, you've logged it well.