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Photograph the work weekly before it is covered up

Progress photos taken weekly cost minutes and settle arguments months later, especially for work that gets covered up. The photo you didn't take is always the one you need.

Updated: . By Jack Butler-Kettle, Construction Claims Consultant.

Why it matters

Most of what a subcontractor builds is covered within weeks. Drainage is backfilled, insulation is boarded over, first fix is plastered in. When the assessor queries a quantity 3 months later, nobody can inspect the work. The argument becomes one person's word against another's. A dated photograph ends it in seconds. The habit fails because photographs get taken when something goes wrong, not as a routine. So the one that matters is the one nobody took. A weekly walk with a phone, filed the same day, costs a few minutes. It builds a record of the whole job as it went up.

How to do it

  1. Fix a day each week to walk and photograph every area you are working in, and put it in the diary.
  2. Check the phone's date and location stamping is on, so each image carries its own date.
  3. Photograph every element before it is covered, with something in shot that shows the location, such as a gridline or a door number.
  4. Upload the week's photographs the same day into a dated folder for the job, named by area.
  5. Reference the relevant folder in each application's back-up.

Example

Illustrative example. The scenario and figures are invented.

The facts

A drainage subcontractor lays below-ground pipework across a site over 6 weeks and backfills as it goes. Its application includes £36,000 for the pipework. The main contractor's assessor arrives after backfill, cannot see the work and queries the lengths and the bedding.

What happens

  1. The subcontractor's foreman has photographed each run before backfill every Friday, with the gridlines visible and the date stamped.
  2. The QS sends the assessor the folder for the 6 weeks, indexed by run, with the measured lengths beside each set of photographs.
  3. The assessor checks the runs against the drawings and the photographs and accepts the quantity and the bedding.

The outcome

The £36,000 is certified in full in the cycle it was applied for. Without the photographs, the sum would have waited on an argument no one could settle by looking at the ground.

To have this set up for you, see our Underpayment Prevention service.