A survey of the site records kept by construction supervisors

A number of writers have cited poor records as limiting the ability of supervisors, and indeed of contractors, to carry out some of their most important functions. The study reported in this paper aimed to identify the problems in detail. This was achieved by conducting a mail-shot survey of construction supervisors working for firms of civil engineering consultants. The results indicate that there is considerable room for improvement in the records kept on most sites, where guidelines are said to be inadequate and the problems of enforcing these inadequate guidelines were also recognized. The main source data for progress records was identified as the site diaries kept by individual members of the supervisor's team, and these were found to be particularly difficult to access for a number of reasons. Since the site diaries are such an important source of information, it is argued that most benefit may be gained by taking steps to improve these daily logs which, in turn, will allow better overviews of progress to be produced.