Site Diary Preparation Checklist

Ask the contractor and appointed professionals what records they keep of the work, and note what those cover so your own diary fills gaps rather than repeating them.

Duplicating a record somebody else keeps properly is effort spent on the part of the picture you are least well placed to see.

Records kept by other parties belong to them; ask what is kept and what may be shared rather than assuming you will have access later.

Decide what only you are placed to record, such as what happens outside working times, what neighbours mention and what you are told in passing.

These are the observations nobody else is capturing, and they are the ones that turn out to be unrecoverable.

Decide from the start that the diary records events rather than builds a case, and keep judgements about people and blame out of every entry.

A diary written as ammunition reads that way to anybody who sees it, and it undermines the entries that are simply factual.

If you are considering how a record might be used in a dispute, take that question to your own legal adviser before changing how you write it.

Choose one place for the diary and keep it there, rather than writing entries into whichever notebook, phone note or message thread is nearest at the time.

Diaries split across several places lose their sequence, which is the only thing that makes a diary worth having.

Decide whether anybody else in the household adds entries, and if so, agree that each entry says who wrote it so the accounts do not blur together.

Two people writing without attribution produce a record where nobody can say who saw what, which weakens all of it.

Accept that a short entry written on the date beats a full account written later, and set the standard low enough that you keep to it when the work is busy.

Almost every abandoned owner diary was abandoned because the writer set out to record too much.

Use the same short set of prompts in every entry, such as what was happening, what stopped, what was said to you and what you owe somebody.

Fixed prompts remove the decision about what to write, which is what actually stops people writing anything.

Date each entry when you write it, and where you are catching up, say plainly that the entry was written later than the events it describes.

A record that quietly presents a reconstruction as a contemporaneous note is worse than one with an honest gap in it.

Leave a prompt blank when you do not know the answer instead of filling it with a reasonable assumption about what was probably happening.

Assumptions in a diary become facts on rereading, and there is no way to tell afterwards which entries were guessed.

Note against each entry that photographs were taken and where they are stored, rather than leaving images and words in two unconnected records.

Pictures and notes are far more useful together, and reconnecting them afterwards is tedious enough that nobody does it.

Mark any entry containing something you need an answer to, so the diary also works as your list of open questions without a second record.

Questions noted in passing get lost among the narrative, and a simple mark makes them findable later.

Where nothing appeared to be happening, record that as an entry with what you observed, rather than skipping the date entirely.

Gaps in a diary are ambiguous, while a note that the property was quiet is a positive observation with a date on it.

Note which trades appeared to be present and roughly how busy the property was, without attempting to record names or count individuals.

The pattern of who attends is what becomes interesting over time, and it needs no judgement about anybody to record.

Record which part of the property was being worked in, using the room names from the drawings so entries can be matched to other records.

Location is the field most often left out and the one that makes an entry findable when you are searching for something specific.

Write down what looks different from when you last looked, in plain terms, rather than trying to describe the operation being carried out.

Visible change is something any owner can record accurately, while an account of the operation is likely to be wrong in a way that matters.

Note deliveries arriving and material or waste leaving, since these mark the boundaries between stages more reliably than anything else you can see.

Arrivals and departures are easy to observe and give a good skeleton of how the work moved through the property.

Record when an area was boarded, sheeted or closed off, and when it was opened again, since these are the moments that determine what can still be seen.

Knowing when something was covered tells you which photographs must exist and which opportunity has already passed.

Describe what you observed without recording whether you consider the work to be on track or moving as it should.

Whether progress is as expected is for the contractor and appointed professionals to state; an owner impression recorded as fact causes avoidable friction.

Note weather where it visibly affected what was happening, such as work moving indoors or an area being sheeted, rather than recording conditions generally.

Weather matters to a record only where it changed something, and tying it to what you saw keeps the note useful.

Record when water, power, heating or drainage were off or interrupted, when they came back and who told you it was happening.

Interruptions to services affect the household directly and are the entries most often needed later.

Where any service is interrupted unexpectedly, contact the contractor immediately rather than investigating anything yourself.

Note occasions when access to the property or to the street was obstructed, and what you were told about the arrangement at the time.

Access questions frequently involve neighbours and the local authority, and the contemporaneous note is what allows a calm answer.

Record any contact from a neighbour about the work, in neutral terms and with the date, and note what you said and who you passed it on to.

Neighbour contact escalates when it appears to have been ignored, and a dated record of passing it on prevents that.

A neighbour comment about the work is not yours to answer on the spot; pass it to the contractor and your appointed professionals and note that you did.

Where work appears to have stopped, record what you observed and the reason you were given, attributing it to whoever gave it rather than stating it as fact.

Reasons given at the time and reasons given afterwards frequently differ, and only the dated note captures the first version.

Note anything you saw that you did not understand, without speculating about it, and add it to the questions to raise through your usual route.

Owners often notice something significant without knowing it; recorded plainly it can be asked about, while speculation gets dismissed.

Record every request made to you for a decision, a choice or information, with the date and who asked, whether or not you were able to answer at the time.

These entries are the ones you will want if there is ever a question about whether the owner held anything up.

Note the date you supplied whatever was asked for and to whom, so the request and the response sit as two dated entries rather than one vague memory.

The gap between a request and a response is often the whole of a later question, and neither end is recorded anywhere else.

Write down answers given to you verbally in the words used, and note that they were verbal, so nothing appears in the record as if it had been confirmed.

Marking an answer as verbal keeps it usable while making clear what it is, which is exactly the distinction that gets lost.

Record remarks suggesting something may change, such as a mention that an item is unavailable or that something will be done differently.

Changes are usually mentioned casually well before they are proposed formally, and the early mention is worth having a date for.

Keep conversations you overheard but were not part of out of the diary, and record only what was said to you directly.

Overheard fragments are unreliable and change the character of the diary from a record into surveillance.

Where a remark could matter, send a short note through your usual route repeating what you understood, and record in the diary that you did so.

The diary entry establishes when you heard something; the note establishes that you raised it, and both are needed.

Mark any entry based on what somebody else told you, and name who told you, rather than writing it in the same voice as things you saw yourself.

A record that mixes the two is unreliable throughout, because a reader cannot tell which entries rest on what.

Where somebody else in the household describes what happened, record their account as theirs, ideally in their words, rather than absorbing it into your own.

Second-hand accounts absorbed into a first-person record are the most common way a diary becomes overstated.

Note whether you were at the property and when, so it is always clear whether an entry describes something observed or reported.

Without this the reader assumes you saw everything, which is rarely true and undermines the entries where you did.

Where an entry rests on an image sent to you, note who sent it and when it was said to have been taken rather than assuming it shows that date.

Forwarded images often show something from earlier, and an entry dated by the message rather than the picture goes quietly wrong.

Say plainly when you are unsure about something, since an entry that records doubt is more useful later than one that reads as confident and turns out wrong.

The credibility of the whole diary rests on the entries where you admitted you did not know.

Leave dates you were away without an entry rather than reconstructing them from what you assume must have happened while you were absent.

Reconstructed entries are indistinguishable from observed ones once written, and they contaminate the record.

Read back across entries at intervals looking for repetitions, such as the same interruption recurring, and raise the pattern rather than each instance.

Patterns are visible only in a diary and are far more productive to raise than a series of individual complaints.

Take dates and observations to a meeting rather than the conclusions you have drawn from them, and ask what explains what you recorded.

Questions grounded in specific dated observations get answered; conclusions get contested.

Treat the diary as your own aide to memory rather than as evidence of anything, and say so when you refer to it in conversation.

Whether any record has weight in a dispute is a question for your own legal adviser; do not present a diary as establishing anything on its own.

Keep the diary after the work finishes, since questions about what was done where and when tend to arise once the property is back in use.

The diary is often the only dated account of a sequence that becomes relevant much later.

Pull out the entries that concern hidden work, services and materials into a short summary for anybody maintaining the property, rather than handing over the whole diary.

A diary is a personal document; the useful parts for somebody else are a small fraction of it.

Before raising anything on the strength of the diary, reread the entries concerned to check whether they are observations or things you were told.

Raise anything serious through your appointed professionals and, where it concerns your agreement, through your own legal adviser rather than acting on the diary alone.