A paragraph where a number was needed
An entry that says “busy day, most trades on site” does not answer how many people were there when a labour claim is examined. A field for people on site gets a figure every day.
Site diary
Site diary template: the fields a day’s entry should hold
Site managers ask what a diary entry should contain because the diary is read twice: once by the team the next morning, and once, perhaps years later, by someone trying to establish what happened on a particular Tuesday. A template that asks the same questions every day is what makes the second reading possible. This page sets out those questions and shows how Fidrel’s UK site diary lays them out as fields.
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Why free-text diaries fail later
Delays mentioned, not separated
A delay buried in the third sentence of the work description is missed when someone searches a year of entries for lost days. Delays need their own field so they can be read on their own.
The photo is on someone’s phone
The picture of the flooded excavation was taken, but it lives in a camera roll. An entry with photos attached to the day is evidence; a photo without a date and an entry is a picture.
The fields a site diary entry should hold
Date and author; where on the site; which company or trade; the work in progress; how many people were on site; the plant and other resources present; what was delivered; the weather; any delay or disruption and its cause; safety observations; and photos. Each stands alone so it can be read alone. The number of people and the weather are the two most often needed later and the two most often missing, because they feel trivial on the day. Fidrel’s UK diary gives each of these its own field, grouped as Work & resources and Follow-up, with the description of the day as free text above them.
Site & diary
How the UK diary lays them out
An entry has a Title, a Date, a Work area / location, a Company and a Description. The Work & resources group holds Work in progress, People on site as a number, Contractor, Plant / resources, Deliveries and Weather. The Follow-up group holds Delays / disruptions, Safety observations and Comment. Files & photos takes images, PDF, Word, Excel, text or ZIP files up to 25 MB each, and on a phone Take photo opens the camera. Entries are numbered SD-001, SD-002 and so on within the project and listed day by day, the most recent day first.
Writing the day’s entry in Fidrel
Step 1
Start the entry
In the project’s Site & diary area choose New site diary entry. Give it a Title, check the Date, and fill in the Work area / location and the Company if the entry is about one trade.
Step 2
Fill in Work & resources
Under Work & resources write the Work in progress, the number of People on site, the Contractor, the Plant / resources on site and the Deliveries received, and type the Weather as you saw it.
Step 3
Fill in Follow-up
Under Follow-up write any Delays / disruptions and their cause, the Safety observations made during the day and a closing Comment. Leave a field empty rather than writing “none” if nothing happened.
Step 4
Add photos and save
Under Files & photos choose Take photo on a phone or add images, PDFs or documents up to 25 MB each, then Save. The entry gets the next number, SD-001 onwards, and appears under its day in the list.
A record that cannot be deleted, with every change logged
A diary entry cannot be deleted. It can be edited by its author, the person named as responsible or a project administrator, and each edit is written to the Activity & history section of the entry as the fields that changed, with who changed them and when. A comment can be added to the history without changing the entry. The entry’s status moves from Open through In progress to Done, which is useful for an entry that records something still to be resolved.
From a diary entry to a non-conformance
When an entry records something wrong, Raise non-conformance starts a non-conformance record from it, carrying over the title, text, location and responsible person, and links the two in both directions. The diary keeps its account of the day, and the non-conformance carries the follow-up through its own statuses. The diary is searched by title with Search records, and filtered by date with From date and To date, by location and by company.
What the site diary does not do
The weather is typed in by the person writing the entry; Fidrel has no weather feed. The diary is not exported to PDF or Excel from Fidrel. An entry is not locked: its author and the project administrators can edit it, and every change is logged with name and time. People on site is a number, not a list of names, and the diary is not linked to the attendance register. A diary entry is not linked to an activity in the programme.
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The work in progress, how many people were on site, the plant and deliveries, the weather, any delay and its cause, safety observations and photos. Keep each in its own field so it can be found on its own later.
It cannot be deleted. It can be edited by its author or an administrator, and every change is logged field by field with the person’s name and the time.
Yes. Open the site diary in the phone’s browser, write the entry and use Take photo to open the camera. Several files can be added at once, up to 25 MB each.
Entries are listed day by day with the most recent first. Filter by From date and To date, by location or by company, or search by title.
No. Weather is a text field that the person writing the entry fills in, as they saw it on site that day.
Yes. Raise non-conformance creates a non-conformance from the entry with its title, text, location and responsible person, linked back to the entry.