How do you build a record on site as a contractor?
„Trust me” is not evidence. Whether your project falls under the Dutch Wkb or you simply have a client who asks a question a year from now: you need to be able to show what's behind that wall. The question isn't whether you document, but when — while you work, or afterwards from memory.
Documenting afterwards doesn't exist
Anyone who has tried it knows: a record you assemble on a Friday afternoon from loose photos on four phones is not a record. You've lost the dates, you no longer know who did what, and the photo of the reinforcement sits between holiday snaps.
It only works if recording happens at the same moment as the work. Not an extra job afterwards, but ten seconds there and then.
What do you record on site?
Whatever rules apply to your project, it comes down to four things that have to be beyond dispute later:
- What was done, with a photo taken before it was closed up.
- When, to the day.
- Who did it.
- Where in the building, down to the room.
Where it goes wrong: where the photo ends up
The photo itself isn't the problem. Every electrician takes one before the wall goes back on. The problem is that it then vanishes into a group chat, between two hundred messages about parking and sick notes.
A group chat is ordered by time. A building isn't. If you're looking for the wiring in the meter cupboard a year from now, you're looking in a room, not in a week.
Recording room by room, as you work
Set your rooms up beforehand: kitchen, meter cupboard, bathroom, hallway. That's a minute of work once, and it decides how your whole record is ordered.
After that there's one rule for your crew: if something is being closed up, photograph it first and put it in the room it belongs to. Take a photo, say a few words, done. Turn it into a form and you'll get no photos at all.
Keep internal remarks internal. „Wall isn't straight, needs correcting” belongs in your own record and not unfiltered with your client. Writing it down is exactly right — that it was put right is precisely what you'll want to show later.
What you're left with at the end
Keep it this way and at the end of the job you have, per room, a dated record with photos and names. That's the raw material for your file.
It isn't the file itself. Which documents you have to hand over, and to whom, depends on your project and your quality assurer; that differs by consequence class and by type of work. But the part that can't be recreated afterwards — the photos of what's behind the wall — you'll have.
And that's the part it always comes unstuck on.
Check what applies to your project
The Wkb was introduced in phases and doesn't weigh equally on every project; renovation follows a different track from new build. Don't go by what you read on a blog, including this one: check what applies to your consequence class and your type of work.
But required or not: a client who calls in two years about a leak has no interest in legislation. They'll ask what was done at the time. Being able to show that saves you an argument you'd otherwise have on instinct.