Construction progress report template

A construction progress report answers one question for somebody who was not there: are we where we said we would be, and if not, by how much. Everything in it either supports that answer or gets cut.

It is a different document from the daily report, which records one day at a time and gets filed. The progress report is a comparison, and it gets read.

The header names the period, not the day

The forecast date belongs on page one of every report, next to the original. Moving it quietly in report 14 and hoping nobody reads report 9 is how a two-week slip becomes a surprise in November. If the forecast moved this period, say so in the same line.

Percent complete has to be tied to something countable

The number that gets argued about is percent complete, and it gets argued about because most reports produce it by feel.

Tie it to units instead. Drywall is sheets hung against sheets in the takeoff. Framing is linear feet of wall. Glazing is units set. Rough-in is fixtures or drops. If you cannot count the thing, count the rooms it is finished in.

Then write the basis down in the report, once, so the figure means the same thing in report 3 and report 14:

Percent complete for each area is hung and finished square footage against the takeoff for that area, excluding punch.

An owner who disagrees with a counted number is disagreeing with the count, which is a short conversation. An owner who disagrees with a feeling has nothing to point at, and that conversation goes on for a week.

Put last period's number beside this one

One table carries most of the report.

Three columns do the work. Last week is what makes movement visible, and an area that did not move is the most informative row in the report. Planned is the schedule you are measuring against. The note says why, in one clause, and never more.

The row worth reading twice is Level 2 west: six points of movement against a plan that wanted 29. It is not a disaster, and buried in a paragraph it would be invisible. In the table it is the first thing anyone sees.

Shoot the same frames from the same spots every week

The photo set is what makes the report evidence instead of assertion, and it only works if the frames repeat.

Pick five or six vantage points at the start of the job and mark them. A column line, a stair landing, the same corner of the parking lot. Stand there every week and shoot the same view. Same spot, same direction, roughly the same time of day so the light is comparable.

A reader flipping through fourteen reports sees the west elevation fill in like a flipbook. That comparison is impossible if every week's photos were taken from wherever the photographer happened to be standing.

Six to ten photographs is the right size. Each one gets a caption with the area, the date and what changed since the last report. The photo documentation guide covers how to shoot the individual frames.

The look ahead is two weeks and names who has to move

One week is not enough warning for anyone to act on, and a month of look ahead is fiction. Two weeks.

The depends-on column is the reason the section exists. A look ahead that lists work without naming what would stop it is a wish list. Naming the electrical signoff, with the date it was requested, puts the delay in front of the person who can clear it while there is still time to clear it.

Open issues carry a decision date, not a status

An issues list where everything reads "in progress" tells nobody anything.

Needed by is the field that makes an issue move. It is the date after which the issue costs the schedule, and it is your estimate, not a request. Item 23 has a needed-by that is two weeks earlier than the lead time would suggest, because a decision that lands after the order window has to be made twice.

Carry closed issues for one more report with the resolution and the date, then drop them. A list that only grows gets skimmed.

Write it the day the period closes

The report goes out Monday morning for the week that ended Friday, or it does not get written at all. By Wednesday the photographs are stale, the reason Level 2 west stalled has been half forgotten, and somebody has already asked by email.

On iPhone and iPad, Sitewise covers the walk that produces the photo set. Shoot your repeating vantage points, dictate what changed while you are looking at it (the voice note transcribes on the phone), sketch onto a photo when the change is hard to see, and each capture carries a timestamp and, with location on, a GPS pin. On a Pro iPhone or Pro iPad with a LiDAR scanner, two taps in the camera measure a dimension and print it on the photo, which is how a slab depression gets into the report as a number. Capture works with no signal and syncs later. Pick the frames that go in the report, leave the rest in the project, and export a PDF or DOCX to send. It does not build the schedule or the percent-complete table for you: no scheduling, no budgeting, no cost tracking, no CAD, and no Android or web version.

For the contemporaneous day-by-day record that sits underneath all of this, and that a delay claim is actually built from, use the daily construction report template.

The test of a progress report is whether somebody who has not visited in a month can read it and know which two things to ask about. If every area looks fine and the completion date moved anyway, the report did not do its job.