Much like inspection checklists and punch lists, construction daily reports are an important component of a good quality program for the construction industry.. They are best used for:
- Documenting construction progress
- Providing information about what happened on the jobsite each day, including:
- Weather conditions
- Subcontractors onsite
- Equipment used
- Work Performed
- Material deliveries
- Recording observations and discussions with subcontractors and crews
- Providing forensic accounts of what happened on the jobsite every day
A construction daily report is valuable and necessary, but it is just one part of a complete quality management system. In addition, you need a more formal inspection process to evaluate quality and subcontractor performance.
Limitations of Daily Reports
Of course, daily reports cannot stand alone when your goal is to improve quality on your entire construction projects.
Construction daily reports document day-to-day work in process activities. They must be used in conjunction with checklists, inspections, punch lists, and other types of monitoring and reporting tools that well help you to achieve project completion. For example, unlike an inspection checklist, a daily report is not intended to:
- Document compliance with specifications
- Rate subcontractor performance
- Indicate when a task has been completed
- Rate the quality of completed tasks
- Inform others about quality issues
- Indicate that the prior sub left the site job-ready
- Ensure that the building process is on track
If you are only relying on daily reports to gather data, you are missing some key elements of a complete construction quality program for a construction project.
However, you can take the opportunity during the daily construction report to identify potential quality issues and address them with subcontractors and crews before the work has been completed.
Check out FTQ360's Daily Reports:
This is a great way to keep quality top of mind and can also help prevent defects from occurring in the first place.
How to Maximize Daily Reports with QM Software
The more efficiently and completely a daily report is captured, the more valuable it will be. Paper forms and digital documents are classic ways to gather daily reports, but they are not necessarily the best ways to keep track on your project's progress.
Using software to support your construction quality program can help you get the most from the data you are collecting, especially since you can easily compare information across multiple projects.
Some of the ways quality management software can help you maximize your daily reports and operate more efficiently in and out of your construction site include:
- Drop-down lists of selectable work activities
- Drop-down lists of equipment on site
- Selectable subcontractors
- Separate sections and tags for quality and safety observations and issues
- Dynamic documents that connect to a database of stored information
- Built-in ability to take pictures with your device and immediately store them in the system
- Copy/paste features to help you save time
- Built-in ability to email reports
Streamlining data entry will make your daily reporting process much easier and faster. You will also reduce errors because rather than manually entering information into every field, you can choose from predetermined lists.
Using a cloud-based software system also means that your information is always accessible, never lost, and able to be used efficiently in the field and also not limited by having to be in the construction site.
Updating your systems in real time means there is no lag between entry and when others can see it, and saves you time by eliminating the re entering the data back at the office.
Use a Complete Quality Management System
There are a lot of software options that can help you do individual components of a quality management program —daily reports, inspections, punch lists, track project progress, etc.—but a single system that integrates everything seamlessly will be the most efficient and effective.
Storing all information in a single database allows you to compare subcontractor performance across multiple projects, identify the best-performing crews, pinpoint the most commonly occurring defects, and much more.
An integrated quality management system is also scalable, so you won’t outgrow it as your business continues to expand. To learn more about how you and/or your project managers can get the most from your daily reports, stay on top of your project's progress and take your construction quality program to the next level, schedule a live demo with FTQ360 today.
