Best Construction Daily Reporting

For construction companies, daily reporting is a balance between information and simplicity. If your daily reports are too simple, they are not very useful. However, if you expect your crew leaders to complete a lengthy report every day, their effectiveness as crew leader suffers. Or, more likely, they simply will not complete the report. Remembering the purpose of the report will help you find the right balance for your company.

What is a daily construction report used for?

Daily construction reports are most commonly used for the benefit of the company whose employees prepare them. In other words, most daily construction reports are used internally. They inform payroll, billing, estimating, scheduling, hiring, firing, and purchasing.

However, keep in mind the external audiences that may also access your report, including customers, a labor board, or an insurance company. Depending on the audience, they may simply be interested in whether the job is progressing on schedule, they may want to know the duties a certain employee performed in a given date range, or they may pay close attention to photos taken on a particular date.

Given the varied purposes of a daily construction report, your best bet is to be as detailed as possible without overburdening your crew leader. Again, it’s a balance.

What is a construction daily log?

A construction daily log is a detailed record of activities on a job site in a single day. A daily log may include information about when employees arrived and left, topics discussed in meetings or briefings, duties performed during the day, measurements of work completed, equipment and materials used, and the results of inspections performed. The daily log is an important part of a construction daily report and is usually integrated into the report itself.

What does the daily report include?

A daily report may include some or all of the following:

• Weather conditions
• Names and qualifications of employees on site
• Clock in and out times
• Jobsite safety information (discussion topics, hazard analysis, etc.)
• Inspection forms (equipment, tools, scaffolding, etc.)
• Labor time with allocation to job items/phases
• Equipment time with allocation to job items/phases
• Material usage with allocation to job items/phases
• Production quantities for applicable job items/phases
• Jobsite Notes and Photos
• Acknowledgment and documentation of any injuries
• Other miscellaneous items as required by your company or job site, such as:
  • Individual expense reimbursement (parking, tolls, etc.)
  • Other contractors on site
  • Results of testing/monitoring

Here is a free construction daily report template that includes many of the items above. We have included it as a Microsoft Word document rather than a PDF so that you can edit it according to your needs. Here is a PDF showing what a completed version of this daily report might look like. We also have another blog post showing what a CrewTracks daily report looks like.

How do you write a construction daily report?

You should complete your daily reports on an app designed for that purpose. These days, a daily reporting app is absolutely essential for a construction company’s ongoing success.

We provided the example above as an illustration and not as a recommended method of completing your daily reports. Frankly, if you are filling out your construction daily reports by hand on paper, you are getting outperformed.

Remember the purposes of a daily report. Internally, they inform your payroll, billing, estimating, scheduling, hiring, firing, and purchasing. Externally, they can provide valuable information to your customers, absolve you of liability, and satisfy external agencies that come knocking in response to an insurance or worker’s compensation claim. File all of this information on paper and you’re guaranteed to waste a lot of time and money every week simply carrying out your normal business operations, not to mention the consequences if you can’t find what you’re looking for when a liability issue arises.

Whether you are already using a daily reporting app or not, CrewTracks is a great option to consider. We work hard to keep things simple for our client office staff and even simpler for the field crews. See for yourself in the quick walkthrough below, and click here if you’d like to chat with one of our account managers to see if CrewTracks is a good fit for you.