No daily site report? You could be liable for 15 years

· Obratec Team · 5 min

Under UK law, a latent defect claim can come 15 years after completion. Without a signed daily site report, you have nothing to defend yourself with.

The problem

Site shuts at 6pm. The site manager locks up and leaves. Nobody wrote anything down.

Six months later, the client raises a defect claim on the slab poured that day. No record of how it was executed. No reinforcement photos. Nothing.

Who pays? The one who can't prove they did their part correctly.

The daily site report is not admin. It's the only permanent witness to what happens on site — and the only one that speaks for you when you're no longer standing there.

What CDM 2015 and UK law require

The Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2015 place a duty on the principal contractor to plan, manage and monitor the construction phase. A core part of that duty is maintaining a Construction Phase Plan that records how works are being managed and controlled — and that plan is only as useful as the daily records that feed into it.

Beyond CDM, the Limitation Act 1980 sets the timeframes within which claims can be brought:

| Type of defect | Limitation period | |---|---| | Latent defects (not discoverable at completion) | Up to 15 years (under the Latent Damage Act 1986) | | Contractual claims (JCT, NEC) | 6 years (simple contract) / 12 years (deed) | | Personal injury on site | 3 years from date of knowledge |

During those periods, any party in the construction chain — contractor, subcontractor, site manager — can be brought into a claim. The only way to defend yourself is with dated, verifiable documentation of what you did, when you did it, and under what conditions.

A daily site report with geotagged photos and a digital signature carries evidential weight. A WhatsApp message with an undated photo does not.

What a complete daily site report must include

Identification

Workforce on site

Works carried out

Incidents and delays

Photographic record

Weather conditions

Signature

Why photos of concealed works are critical

Concealed works are everything that gets buried or covered: reinforcement before a concrete pour, waterproofing membranes under screed, services inside partitions.

Once covered, they can only be inspected destructively. If damp appears three years later and the client claims the waterproofing was inadequate, the only way to prove the membrane was installed correctly — right laps, no tears, correct coverage — is with photos taken at the time of installation.

This matters especially for building envelope elements covered by Part C of the Building Regulations (resistance to contaminants and moisture). The technical requirement exists. But meeting it and being able to prove you met it are two different things.

For a detailed breakdown of what makes a photo legally admissible as construction evidence — including metadata and timestamp requirements — see why WhatsApp photos don't hold up as legal proof on site.

How often should you write one

Every working day on site is the standard answer. In practice, consistency matters more than perfection: an incomplete report every day is worth more than a perfect report once a week.

The days when a report is non-negotiable, no matter how quiet the site:

The real obstacle: time

The barrier is not knowledge — site managers know exactly what happened on their site. The barrier is time. Writing a complete report from memory at the end of a ten-hour shift does not happen consistently. Or it happens badly.

The practical fix is to capture information as it happens: record a voice note while walking the site, photograph concealed works before they're covered, log quantities at the point of execution.

With OBRATEC, the daily site report builds itself during the working day: dictate observations while walking the site, photograph concealed works before covering them, sign with your finger. By the time you reach the car, the PDF is ready to send — without typing a single line.

12 hours recovered per month. From £9/month. Try free for 14 days →

Conclusion

The daily site report is a site manager's primary protection against future claims. Limitation periods under UK law are long — up to 15 years for latent defects — and within that window, anything can be challenged.

Good documentation doesn't require more time. It requires capturing information at the right moment, with the right tools.

If your site involves subcontractors, your daily records should also track their compliance documentation — insurance, CSCS cards, method statements. For the full picture on managing subcontractor documentation see the contractor documentation that protects you if there is an accident.