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How To Make the Daily Log Your Friend Not a Painful Chore

Construction Daily Log Software

Construction projects are getting bigger and more complex. Add to it mounting pressures of labor and material shortages and increasing costs. No doubt, companies are having a challenging time managing them, and one of the biggest reasons for this is outdated record-keeping methods. The inability to track and monitor construction projects across materials, progress made, delays, and nonconformance’s hurts not just worker productivity but also schedules and deadlines.

Read on to learn how you can make the error-prone and mundane task of daily log your friend, not a painful chore.

The Importance of Daily Logs

Capturing each activity on the job site as it happens is extremely important to get real insight into projects, boost efficiency, and increase productivity. When done right, it can help provide visibility into timecards, and track the delivery (and usage) of production materials, visitors, inspections, injuries, and even weather. All this information can then be fed into Budget vs. Actual progress reports to manage resource allocations, workflows, safety checklists, and inspections on the job site.

A well-planned and well-captured daily log report can help construction companies get work started on time, make contractors aware of their tasks, and ensure they have all the necessary equipment and supplies needed to keep the project on schedule. Any delays or issues are accurately captured (and explained), enabling onsite managers to take appropriate corrective action.

Daily Log Challenges for Construction Companies

Having an accurate record of all construction activities goes a long way in ensuring projects are completed efficiently, effectively, and on time. It helps keep every stakeholder aware of what’s going on and take on their responsibilities with conviction.

But daily log management is easier said than done.

Companies must cross many hurdles to get this right. Let’s look at the top daily log challenges for construction companies:

  • Manual approaches to daily log management introduce time lags. These are also prone to error and a cause of disengagement and poor morale, low productivity, and reduced efficiency.
  • The absence of mobile apps means managers can only enter data and view reports from a desk and not remotely from the job site. (Laptops?)
  • Relying on an array of different systems to track and manage daily logs leads to unnecessary and sometimes erroneous and duplicate data entry.
  • Poor integration of construction software with systems such as payroll or ERP restricts the seamless flow of data between systems, causing decisions to be taken based on half-truths.
  • Limited capabilities offered by legacy systems come in the way of scalability, causing companies to face several scalability issues in daily log management.

5 Tips to Maintain Daily Logs

Efficient daily log management is critical to review and analyze the progress of any construction project. Using this data, construction managers can get insight into existing challenges, analyze metrics, and plan for future tasks. By listing events that happen during the day or week, including activities performed, materials used, and issues faced, a daily log presents pertinent information about the job site, providing an updated and accurate log of everything that happens.

If you want to increase efficiency and keep track of all activities that happen in a project, you need to move away from traditional and manual approaches to achieve effective daily log management. Here are five tips that can help you overcome common challenges and improve the efficiency of your daily logs:

1. Remove Manual Inputting

Complex construction projects can no longer be managed or monitored manually. If you want to increase efficiency, you need to eliminate manual inputs. Automating the capture of project activities as they happen on the field is a great way to accelerate tracking while also minimizing the margin of error. Such automation can also help in feeding the right data into the right systems and reports, allowing managers to make timely, data-backed decisions.

2. Simplify the Ecosystem

Construction projects are extremely convoluted. Using a variety of systems to manage activities further complicates the monitoring process. If you want to make daily log management a breeze, you need to simplify the IT ecosystem by investing in a unified daily log and attendance software that takes care of all project and timecard-related activities: from equipment usage to visitor information, inspections, injuries, safety checklists, and more.

3. Enable Seamless Integration

When you invest in a centralized daily log and attendance software, also make sure to enable seamless integration with other systems. These include your ERP system and your payment and accounting systems, so you can accurately capture and share information from across the project and business and make decisions that are backed by hard truths.

4. Allow for Anytime Access

In today’s digital era, having construction managers view critical project-related information only from their office desks is not practical. Instead, make sure to allow for anytime, anywhere access to daily logs, so managers can take important decisions on the go. Investing in a mobile app that works on different devices is a great way to report attendance and capture daily logs from anywhere: office, vehicle, or construction site – and seamlessly manage activities remotely.

5. Offer Self-Service

Offering configurable, role-based access to all field users is another way to streamline the process of daily log management. Enabling your technicians, craft workers, electricians, and specialty contractors to clock in hours by themselves, see their projects, and assign tasks from a single sign-in page can empower everyone to be more responsible and accountable – helping you meet deadlines and ensure compliance.

If you want to get the most out of daily log management, you need to stop looking at it as a boring chore and start considering it as a critical asset that can lead to successful project management. Follow the above tips today to ensure proper allocation of tasks, fuel accountability, and easily track activities across your multifaceted construction project.

To know more about the viability of a unified daily log and attendance software, get in touch with us today!