What should a site diary actually say?

A site diary should record facts a stranger could act on years later: who was on site, where each gang worked, what they achieved, what stopped or slowed them, who or what caused it, and how long it lasted, alongside the baseline of weather, labour and plant. The entry that fails is the conclusion: delayed by others, no access, waiting on information. It records frustration, not the event, and proves nothing, because it names no area, cause or duration. The entry that succeeds is specific: which trade, which block, which level, what was missing or blocked, which company caused it, and the hours or days lost. Two habits multiply a diary's value. Write it the same day, because entries batch-filled at the week's end read exactly like what they are. And keep writing on the ordinary days, because an unbroken run of unremarkable entries is what makes the remarkable ones credible: without the baseline of a normal week, you cannot show what the disrupted week cost.

Compare two entries about the same Tuesday. The first reads: bricklayers delayed by others again. The second: bricklayers, six operatives, block B level two. Scaffold handover promised Monday still not given, confirmed by MC site manager at 8am walk. Gang relocated to block A snagging from 8am to 12.30, back on B after handover at 12.30. Four and a half hours lost, second occurrence this week, photos of incomplete scaffold at 8.10. Eight months later, in a prolongation claim, the first is waved away in a sentence. The second forces the paying side to check its own scaffold records, which confirm the late handover, and the half day joins fourteen others as the proven backbone of the claim. The difference was ninety seconds on the day, and several thousand pounds at the account.