What a useful weekly site update looks like

Ask anyone who has built before what went wrong and communication comes up more often than workmanship. Usually the build was fine. The client just spent nine months not knowing whether it was.

Three things, every Friday

• ·What was completed this week
• ·What is scheduled for next week, and who is on site
• ·Anything that needs a decision from you, with a date it is needed by

Plus photographs, including the parts that will be covered up. Clients rarely look at the frame photos at the time. They are very glad to have them three years later when someone needs to know where a stud or a pipe sits.

A short update sent every week beats a detailed one sent when there is news.

The discipline matters more than the format. A quiet week still gets an update saying it was a quiet week and why — waiting on a certifier, waiting on weather, waiting on a delivery. Silence is what makes people assume the worst.