Daily Progress Report

"If it isn't written down, it didn't happen".

Scenario One:

The Client storms into your office having just noticed that the roof pitch on his house is the 5/12 called for in the plan and not the 6/12 that he swears he told your site supervisor to change it to when he was visiting the job site.

Wouldn't it be handy to have the date-stamped documentation indicating that, yes, he had suggested the change, but when told the cost of the change would be $4,200, he decided against it?

Scenario Two:

The Client threatens to take you to court for the extra rent she had to pay and for missing Thanksgiving in her new home because "you didn't deliver on schedule" ...

Wouldn't it be useful to be able to document that there were a total of 18 rainy days in the early part of the build that delayed the excavation, foundation and framing, and that she held up construction because she couldn't make up her mind about the height of the window over the kitchen sink.

Scenario Three:

The Attorney for an injured employee of a subcontractor you are using notifies you that he intends to sue your Worker's Comp carrier for head injuries sustained by his client while on your jobsite.

Wouldn't it be important to have records on hand documenting that you have warned the subcontractor that his employees don't use PPE when the foreman isn't around?

One problem..

Lack of on-site, contemporaneous documentation

Three solutions.

From Builder Resources

Solution #1

First, you can make a hard copy of the report. These copies would be kept in the job binder, in sequential order.

At least one entry will be made for each active job per day. If no one from your firm was at the jobsite that day, the entry would reflect that. More likely, you would use the form to document the work done on the site that day. Use a separate line for each trade involved, and be certain to comment on what took place.

Use as many of these forms as necessary for each project.

View hard copy DPR worksheet

Access hard copy DPR worksheet

Solution #2

The second option, available in the same download, is an electronic version of the hard copy.

Download the file to your computer for each project. Rename the file and save to Dropbox (or other cloud platform). In the Anderson Project file, name the file something like DPR-Anderson-YY-MMDD.

Then call the file up at the jobsite or back at your office and make the appropriate entries.

View electronic DPR worksheet

Access electronic DPR worksheet

Solution #3

Imagine having the daily job activity entered every day by your superintendent and available to you in real time, seconds after the entry is made.

Imagine your designer able to put product changes on-line for immediate update.

Imagine knowing that every important activity on every job is being updated moment by moment by your entire organization.

It’s possible using the free version of Asana.

Here’s how…

Daily Progress Report slide deck

The Daily Progress Report is filed every day on every active job. The process shown here gets the time required to make the report down to about a minute per job. With that kind of efficiency, and with how important the information is in terms of litigation risk management, there is just no excuse for neglecting to file the Daily Progress Report on every active job every day.

No matter which solution you use, the daily entry should include:

Meetings with the client at the site, and any changes directed by the client;
Any comments or commendations by the client;
Which subcontractors were on site, for how long, and what they did;
How many subcontractor employees were on site;
Subcontractor safety issues;

Any injuries to anyone on the jobsite;
What materials were used and how they were used;
Summarize any communication between the job superintendent and the subcontractor;
Any conflicts between trades and how the conflicts were resolved;
Anything else of importance.

More information on the Asana Project Management platform

This lesson only covers the use of the Daily Progress Report feature in Asana. Find much more information about using the Asana platform for project management in the Builder Academy courses below.

Project Management With Asana

Asana Project Management template