What records should a subcontractor keep?

Keep six things as routine, because you cannot know in month two which of them month eleven will need. A daily site diary recording who was where, what was worked on, and anything abnormal: access denied, areas not ready, waiting on information. Labour allocation, even rough, putting operatives against activities and areas, because disruption claims live or die on it. Photographs with dates and locations: progress, conditions found, work about to be covered up. Instructions and changes in writing, chasing written confirmation of anything verbal within days rather than weeks. The payment trail: applications, notices received and sent, and what actually arrived. And the goods side, delivery tickets and off hire notes, which settle more dayworks and materials arguments than anyone expects. The test for each is not whether it proves a claim today, it is whether it was made at the time: contemporaneous records, the ones made while the events ran, carry a weight at assessment that no reconstruction ever recovers. Kept daily these cost minutes on a phone; reconstructed a year later they cost a consultant's invoice and half their credibility.

Picture two subcontractors hit by the same unready site. The first has a foreman who spends four minutes a night on a diary entry and a photo set, and a Monday habit of splitting last week's hours by area. When the delay claim comes, its file shows exactly which zones were blocked on which days and where the gangs stood down. The second has payroll, a few undated photos and a good memory. Both suffered the same events; one collects and one negotiates from weakness. The difference was never the events, it was forty minutes a week of habit. The lesson is to build the keeping into the routine now, because records cannot be backdated honestly.