Site diary software
Site diary software that writes the diary itself.
Every other site diary app gives your site manager another form to fill in at seven in the evening. Construction Metric reads the WhatsApp group, the photos, the voice notes and the emails your team already sends, and writes the daily site diary from them. From £19 a site a month, unlimited users, free for 30 days.
What is site diary software?
A site diary is the daily record of what actually happened on a construction site: who was on it, what was built, what turned up, what went wrong, and what anyone was told to do about it. It is the most boring document on the project until the day it becomes the most important one, which is usually the day someone disputes a delay, a variation or an account.
Site diary software exists because the paper version does not survive contact with a live job. Most products in this category are a mobile form: fields for labour, plant, weather and progress, filled in by the site manager at the end of the day. That is better than a notebook, but it still depends on a tired person typing a summary of eleven hours from memory, and it still misses everything that happened in the group chat.
The alternative is to build the diary from what the site already produces. A live job generates a continuous stream of evidence without anyone being asked to: messages, photographs, voice notes, delivery tickets, emails. Capture that stream properly and the daily report is a by-product of the work rather than another job at the end of it. That is the approach Construction Metric takes, and it is why the capture layer is a WhatsApp group rather than an app the team has to remember to open.
What belongs in a construction daily report?
A daily report that is worth keeping records all of the following, every day, including the quiet ones. The gaps are what get attacked later: a diary with three missing weeks around the exact period in dispute is worse than no diary at all.
Labour and plant
Who was on site, by trade and number, and what plant was standing or working. This is the backbone of any disruption or prolongation argument.
Works completed
What was actually built, by location, in enough detail that progress can be reconstructed against the programme.
Weather
Conditions and any time lost to them. Weather claims fail on missing daily records more often than on the weather itself.
Deliveries and instructions
What arrived, what was rejected, and anything the team was told to do differently, with who said it and when.
Delays and their causes
The event, the time lost, and the reason. A cause recorded on the day is evidence; a cause recalled a year later is an argument.
Health, safety and visitors
Near misses, incidents, toolbox talks and who came on site. Increasingly this is also golden thread material.
How is this different from a site diary app?
| A typical site diary app | Construction Metric | |
|---|---|---|
| Who fills it in | A site manager, at the end of a long day | Nobody: it is written from what the team already sent |
| When it gets written | Later, often days later, from memory | The same evening, from timestamped messages |
| What gets missed | The small stuff that turns out to matter | Nothing that was said, sent or photographed |
| Photos | On someone’s phone, unlabelled | Filed against the day and the location, searchable |
| Proof it is contemporaneous | The date typed at the top | Original message timestamps, kept and hash-chained |
| Cost model | Per user, so people get left off | Per site, unlimited users and sub-contractors |
This is not a claim that form-based apps are bad. If your team already fills one in reliably every day, keep it. The honest comparison against ten of them, including what each does better than us, is on the compare page.
Why the record matters more than the software
Under both JCT and NEC, entitlement turns on notices given in time and facts you can prove. An extension of time is won or lost on whether the delaying event, its effect and its date can be demonstrated from records made at the time. The same is true of a variation argued after the fact, and of a daywork sheet nobody signed.
Since the Building Safety Act, higher-risk buildings carry a further duty: the golden thread of information has to be kept, structured and handed over. A site diary that lives in a notebook, or in a chat thread that scrolls away, does not meet that standard on its own.
So the question to ask of any site diary software is not how nice the form is. It is whether, eighteen months from now, it can produce a complete, timestamped, tamper-evident account of a period someone is challenging, without a week of archaeology first.
Common questions
What is site diary software?
Site diary software records what happened on a construction site each day: who was there, what was built, what was delivered, the weather, delays, instructions and incidents. Traditional site diary apps give the site team a form to complete. Construction Metric works the other way round: it listens to the site WhatsApp group, photos, voice notes and emails the team already sends, and writes the daily diary from them automatically.
What should a construction daily report contain?
A defensible daily report records the date and weather, labour and plant on site by trade and number, the works completed by location, deliveries received, instructions and variations, delays and their causes, health and safety events, visitors, and who signed it off. Each entry should be timestamped and traceable to its source so it holds up months later.
Is a WhatsApp group enough on its own?
No. A WhatsApp group is an excellent capture layer and a poor record: messages scroll away, media expires from phones, exports are hard to read and easy to challenge, and nothing is organised by date or subject. The fix is not to ban the group, it is to keep everything it produces as a structured, tamper-evident record. See our guide on whether WhatsApp messages are admissible evidence.
How much does site diary software cost in the UK?
Construction Metric starts at £19 per site per month for WhatsApp capture and the nightly diary, £49 with the site app and meeting recorder, and £199 with the contract layer. Every tier includes unlimited users and unlimited sub-contractors, because charging per seat is what leaves holes in a record. The first 30 days are free with no card.
Do site diaries have to be signed?
There is no universal legal requirement for a signature, but a diary that is reviewed and signed off daily carries more weight than one assembled after a dispute starts. What matters most in practice is that the record is contemporaneous, complete and consistent: made at the time, covering the bad days as well as the good, and not visibly reconstructed later.
Can sub-contractors keep their own site diary?
Yes, and they should. When a delay or a variation is argued, the party with its own contemporaneous record is in a far stronger position than the party relying on someone else’s. Construction Metric is priced per site with unlimited users precisely so a sub-contractor can keep a full record of their own scope without paying per head.
See what it writes before you decide
There is a full sample diary on this site, built from one ordinary day of site traffic. Read that first, then start a free 30 day trial on a live job: a site name and a mobile number is all it takes, and the first diary lands the same evening.