A delay is a record against a day of the site diary saying what held the work up and how long it cost. The Delay register then totals them across a date range, so “how many days did we lose to the weather this quarter” is a number with a column behind it rather than a read through a season of write-ups. It is part of the Site Diary (see the “site_diary” topic), on both the mobile app and the web app, and the register itself is in a browser.
Why it matters: A diary that records the slip and not the reason for it makes a delay claim something you assemble by reading twelve weeks of paragraphs. A delay carries its cause, the time lost, the work it held up and who filed it, beside the weather already frozen onto that day, so the argument is a column you total rather than a story you retell.
How to record one:
- Open the day in the Site Diary. In a browser the Delays card is in the right-hand column, beside who was on site; on the phone it is under the date
- Press Record a delay
- Pick the cause: Weather, Holiday, Shutdown, No access, Materials, Plant, Labour, Information, Instruction or Other. These are the same causes a closed day uses, so both total into one figure
- Say how long: Part of the day, with the hours (3.5 means three and a half), or The whole day
- Tick any work it held up, if you want to. A task, a delivery or an inspection can be named, and the delay then shows against it in the register
- Add a note. It is optional, except for Other, and it is where the argument actually gets written: “rain from 06:40, the pour called off, the gangs moved to internal first fix at 11:00”
- Press Save
From what somebody logged: when somebody on the team logs their day from the phone’s Log activity button and says what held them up, the entry shows it in amber on the day. In a browser, press Record as a delay on it: the delay opens with their cause and their words filled in, and you add how long was lost. They are never asked for hours, so the time lost is always yours to state. Once it is recorded, the entry says In the delay register so nobody records it twice.
Several delays on one day is normal and expected: rain until ten, then a scaffold inspection, then a delivery that never came. Record each one.
“The whole day” is a button, not a number: Left to type it, three people would enter 8, 9 and 10 hours for the same lost day, and a total built from that is not evidence. A whole day counts as the working day set on the project, which an admin sets once in Project Settings under Working day (8 hours by default). The register says which figure it used.
The Delay register: Open it from Delay register, next to Print, at the top of the diary day. It shows:
- Hours lost, working days lost and days affected across the range you choose
- A chip per cause with its own total, which is also the filter: press Weather to see only weather delays and only their hours
- Every row, newest first, with its date (press it to open that day), cause, time lost, note, the work it held up and who recorded it
- Days recorded as having no work carried out (see the “no_work_days” topic), marked No work carried out and counted as a whole day, in the same column and under the same cause list
A day that is closed AND has delays on it is listed in full and counted once, marked Not counted twice. The day was already wholly lost, so the stoppages inside it are part of the record without being added on top.
Getting it out of the app: Export gives a spreadsheet of what is on screen, with a number column a surveyor can sum beside the words a person reads. The file states the working day it converted through, says so when it is a filtered copy, and accounts for any row it listed and did not add up. Its last two columns are Received, when the diary received each record, and Written, for a record a phone wrote with no signal and sent later. Print gives the register as a PDF through your browser, filters and all.
Changing or removing one: Press the pencil on a delay to change it. Any change to the cause, the time lost or the note is stamped as a correction and the row is marked Edited from then on, because a corrected figure presented as the original one is what sinks a document in a dispute. Only the person who recorded a delay, or a project admin, can remove it, and there is no history to restore it from.
Who can see delays: Admins and members. Followers (clients and outgoing subcontractors) cannot see the delays, the register or the diary: what the job lost and why is the contractor’s working record. See the “permissions” topic.
On the phone: You can record, change and remove a delay on a day, and read what a day lost, with or without signal. A delay recorded with no signal is kept on the phone and reaches the diary when it next connects. The diary keeps when it received the delay, from its own clock, and when it was written. Where the two are a quarter of an hour or more apart, the day and the register show both, on the phone and in a browser (“Written 10:42, received 14:05”), so a late upload does not read as a late entry. The register itself, with the totals and the export, is in a browser.
The first time a project is opened on a phone, its delays need a connection until the diary has finished arriving. Until then the card says they could not be loaded rather than showing a day that lost eight hours as a clean one. A private task is linked to a delay in a browser, not on the phone, unless you are an admin.