What Are Construction Field Reports

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Construction field reports, also known as site visit reports or site progress/inspection reports, are drafted during on-site meetings and regular inspections. A construction field report is important in documenting how every task is acted upon in relation to project deadlines and a common vision.

An architect typically drafts these reports and includes open items discussed in the project construction planning. The field report is completed after site inspections are done and are distributed to all the parties involved, and the report lets everyone know what sort of work is expected from them and by when. The report also covers any adjustment or additional requirements in the construction plan.

Importance Of Field Reports For Construction Project Management

Construction reports are crucial in detecting irregularities early in the project management plan.

By inspecting the site regularly and documenting everything in the construction reports, architects can make the required adjustments before it’s too late. Errors detected early in the plan are easier and cheaper to rectify.

These punch-list reports are a quality control measure and should be produced regularly from start to finish.

Many stakeholders are involved in architectural project management, so misunderstandings are common, which may lead to errors and irregularities. These errors will lead to delays that will, in turn, cause financial issues.

Detailed construction reports help avoid such errors. Field reports document everything from items and who should do which work when unnecessary delays are prevented, and everyone stays on the same page.

A construction field report with everything documented in them, including arguments and discussions, tends to play a critical part in potential legal issues. In a way, field reports that are timely put together and distributed to all stakeholders serve as a hedge from legal trouble in the future.

Say, the architect, the contractor, and the client decide to change some colours used on the project. The three parties agree on this change, which is documented in the construction report. In case if the client or the contractor denies having agreed to the change in the item, the construction report will contain proof for any possible disputes.

What Is Included In Construction Field Reports

Many templates are available for construction field reports, but they all have common elements. They are:

General report and project information

This includes data including report number, date of the report, the address of the project, project name and number, and the client’s name.

Current status of the project

This is a detailed account describing the current project status to everyone involved.

Overview and planning

This section details the different tasks and construction phases in multiple development or completion stages. Contractors can use this information to understand how soon they need to work on a task.

Contacts table with details of all stakeholders

The details of the parties involved and their points of contact are included in this table. This table also comes in handy to show who was present during the site inspection.

List of open items and observations

This is the most important part of the construction report, where observations and the list of open items are documented. As a result, the client, the contractor, and the architect get a clear view of their understanding of the project.

Disclaimer

This is a significant part in the case of potential lawsuits and serves as evidence of proof.

The most common field report mistake is not producing the report on time. Once a report is updated and mailed out, everyone will know what tasks are currently in development and what needs to be completed in this period. If that does not happen – the project stalls and experiences delays.

Construction Reports Best Practices

Certain best practices will make your field reports read easier, which means working with you is also easier.

A construction field report should be well-structured & contain proper titles and subsequent descriptive paragraphs to those titles. A structured, well-written report is easier to process by the involved parties than a chaotic, messy document.

The field report should also be a status report in which every item and task is progressing and changing status from “not done” in the process to completely “done”.

Every item can be given a unique number for reference in future discussions.

Many architects use photos and sketches in their construction reports instead of plain text because graphical images are easier to process and difficult to forget.

Annotations also work well with images explaining a construction project management problem. Mistakes and misunderstandings will easily be prevented if you use clear and intuitive imagery – you can use drawing and sketching apps for that.

Floor plans should have location pointers to indicate the issue’s location.

Most importantly, the field report should be forwarded to all parties after the site inspection. If you forgot to include someone’s email address – it’s on you. Our client communication module makes sure you get that right every time.

PlanMan makes it easy to build, maintain, and email field reports and store all necessary documents. We have a module for every need of a modern architect – the best part is you can use PlanMan to build field reports on the go using any tablet you like.