The site diary as evidence: what an entry needs to survive a dispute

Nobody keeps a site diary for the days that go well. It is kept for the day, eighteen months later, when an adjudicator has to decide whether the drainage really was stopped for a week by a late instruction, or whether the subcontractor's standing-time claim is an invention. On that day the diary is either the best document the contractor has or an embarrassment, and the difference was decided at half past five on an ordinary Tuesday by whoever filled the page in. This is what an entry needs so that it counts.

What contemporaneous means, and why it matters

A contemporaneous record is one made at the time by someone who was there, for the purpose of recording what happened rather than for the purpose of the dispute. That definition is the whole value of the diary. A witness statement written after the claim has been notified is memory shaped by the argument; a programme analysis is only as good as the facts it is built on; correspondence is the parties talking to each other with an eye on the file. The diary, if it was written on the day and never altered, is none of those things. It is what the person in charge of the site believed had happened before anyone knew it would matter.

Adjudication makes this sharper than litigation does. The adjudicator has weeks, not months, to reach a decision, and will not hear from everyone who was on site. The party whose records let the adjudicator reconstruct the day in question from one folder starts ahead. The party whose case rests on what the site manager now recalls does not.

The entry, heading by heading

One page per day, completed at the end of the shift by the person in charge of the site, signed, never altered. The headings are not optional, and each one is there because a dispute will ask for it.

• Header. Project, date and day, project week and day number, site hours, and who completed the page. A diary that cannot be tied to a programme week needs a translation exercise before it can be used.
• Weather and ground conditions. Morning and afternoon separately: conditions, temperature, wind, ground state, and, above all, the hours lost and which operatives were affected. "Wet" is a weather note. "Rain 09:40 to 11:10, external drainage D4 to D7 stopped, eleven operatives, 1.5 hours" is a delay record, and only the second kind supports an extension of time.
• Labour on site. By company and trade, with numbers, the split where a gang was divided, the location and the activity, and a total. This is the entry that proves, or disproves, resource levels a year later, and it is checked against timesheets and subcontractor returns. Round numbers every day are a sign the page was filled in from habit.
• Plant. Each item with its reference, hire reference, hours worked, hours standing and the reason for standing. Standing plant with a reason is a disruption record in its own right.
• Deliveries. Time, supplier, material, quantity, the goods received note reference and the condition on arrival. A rejected delivery with a photograph reference and a nonconformance number is worth more than the exchange of emails that follows it.
• Visitors. Name, company, role, purpose, outcome, time in and out. When the client later says nobody from their side agreed to the change, the diary entry recording the visit and the conversation is the reply.
• Instructions and information received. From whom, the reference, the subject and the action taken. A verbal instruction goes in the diary on the day and is confirmed in writing under the contract's procedure; the diary is the evidence of when it was given, the confirmation is the evidence of what it said.
• Delays, disruption and events affecting progress. Cause, area, operatives affected, duration, what was done about it, who was told, and the cross-reference to the early warning, the notice or the nonconformance. This is the section a claim or a defence stands on, and it is the one most often left blank on the days that turn out to matter.
• Inspections, hold points and nonconformities. The ITP line, the level, who attended, the result and the record reference. An entry that says a hold point was witnessed and passed, with the check sheet number, ends most arguments about whether an inspection took place.
• Health and safety observations, photographs taken, and the plan for tomorrow. Each cross-referenced to the register it belongs in.

Consistency with everything else

A diary does not stand alone, and an adjudicator will not read it alone. The labour figures are compared with the timesheets and the subcontractor's own daily returns. The plant hours are compared with the hire invoices. The weather is compared with the nearest station's published data. The instruction recorded on Tuesday is compared with the confirmation of verbal instruction dated Thursday. The delay entry is compared with the early warning register and the programme update issued that month. Where they agree, each record makes the others stronger. Where they disagree, the diary is the record that loses credibility first, because it was the one written by the party relying on it.

The practical answer is to make the diary the index and the registers the detail. The diary entry says the pour to slab B2 was held for a rebar cover failure and cites the nonconformance number; the nonconformance report carries the detail, the photograph and the close-out; the photograph log gives the photograph a number the diary can quote. A site whose registers cross-reference each other can answer a question about any day on the job in minutes. A site whose registers were written separately will spend a fortnight reconciling them and the result will still be open to challenge.

How a diary is read in a dispute

Some general principles, which we set out without reference to any particular decision, apply across adjudication, arbitration and the courts. A record made at the time is given more weight than a recollection. A record made in the ordinary course of business is given more weight than one made for the dispute. A record that is specific, with times, locations, numbers and names, is given more weight than a general one. A record that the other party had the opportunity to see and did not challenge at the time is stronger than one produced for the first time in the referral. And a record that has been altered, or that was plainly written up in one sitting for a week, is given little weight at all, and may take the rest of the contractor's evidence down with it.

Two consequences follow. The first is that opinion has no place on the page. "Client's team unhelpful" proves nothing; "client's representative attended 10:00 to 12:00, verbal instruction to add two double sockets in room G14, confirmed by CVI-011 at 15:00" proves something. The second is that the quiet days matter as much as the eventful ones. "No delays, full resource, dry" on the Monday is the entry that makes the delay on the Wednesday credible. A diary with entries only on bad days looks like what it is.

Paper, Word or Excel

Any of the three works if the site will actually complete it before leaving. A bound book is hard to alter and easy to lose. A Word page per day suits a site that keeps its records in a folder and signs them. A workbook with one tab per week and a column per day suits a site that lives at a laptop, and it makes the labour and hours-lost totals add up. Whatever the medium: the same headings, the same day, a signature, and a weekly review by the person the site manager reports to, which is the step that catches the missing days and moves a recorded delay to the person who has to give the contractual notice under NEC4 or JCT before the time for doing so runs out.

Our Site Management, Planning & Records Pack carries the diary in both forms with a fully completed worked day, alongside the labour, plant, delivery and weather records and the photograph log it cross-references; the Construction Records Library holds the inspection records the diary points to. Neither will make a site keep its diary; they only make the page worth keeping when it does.