Did anyone photograph plot 42's foundations?
A housebuilder's site manager emails. A crack has appeared in a plot's garage wall and their engineer wants to see the foundations as dug and as poured. Separately, a utility company says a duct under the road was laid too shallow. Your gangers did take photos. They are on four different phones, mixed in with family photos and screenshots, and one of the phones was replaced last month.
Your contracts manager spends a day asking gangers to scroll through their camera rolls.
Why photos cannot be found
Taking a photo is easy. Taking one that will be useful months later needs it to be filed against the right plot, run and stage, and that is the part nobody has time for on site. Phone photos have a date and sometimes a location, but not a plot number, and they stay on the phone that took them.
- Photos live on personal phones.
- Nothing links a photo to a plot, run or stage.
- Photos are lost when phones are replaced or people leave.
- Nobody knows which stages were photographed and which were not.
- Finding a photo means asking around and scrolling.
What lost photos cost
When a question comes up about buried work, the photo is often the only evidence of what was done. Without it, you may have to expose work to prove it, or accept responsibility you might not have. Inspections by building control or adopting bodies go more smoothly with clear evidence. And a contracts manager spends days hunting photos that should take seconds to find.
The photo record we build
- Gangers open a simple photo app on their phone, pick the site and the plot or run, and the stage from a short list: excavation, before pour, before backfill, duct or pipe laid, and so on.
- Each photo is stamped with date, time and GPS position, and a location on the site plan.
- Photos upload to central storage when signal allows, and do not stay on the phone.
- Checklists can prompt for the photos you want at each stage, so the gang knows what is expected.
- Anyone in the office can find photos by site, plot, run, stage or date, or by clicking a spot on the site plan.
- Photos can be shared as a pack for a plot or run with a housebuilder, inspector or engineer, with the tags shown.
- The contracts manager can see which plots and runs are missing photos at a stage.
| Stage | Typical photo | Found by |
|---|---|---|
| Foundation excavated | Trench with depth staff | Plot and stage |
| Before pour | Trench clean, any reinforcement | Plot and stage |
| Pipe laid before backfill | Pipe on bedding, with marker | Run and stage |
| Duct laid | Duct at depth with tape | Road chainage and stage |
| Manhole built | Inside and out | Manhole reference |
What evidence your contracts or inspectors need is set by them. We make sure what you capture can be found.
Photos that answer the question
When someone asks what was under the ground, the answer is a search, not a day of scrolling. Gangers take the photos they always took, in the same time, but now they are filed. Missing photos are spotted while the trench is still open. And the photo record stays with the business when phones change and people move on.
Could you find your pre-backfill photos today?
- Photos of buried work are on gangers' personal phones.
- You cannot quickly find photos for a given plot or run.
- Photos have been lost when a phone was replaced.
- You do not know which stages were photographed.
- You have had to expose work to show what was done.