How to fill in a daywork sheet

Daywork is how extra or changed work gets paid for when it can't sensibly be valued at the rates in the contract. Instead of a rate per metre or per item, you are paid for what the work actually took: the labour, the plant and the materials, plus whatever additions the contract allows. The daywork sheet is the record of what it took, and it is only worth what can be checked on it.

When a daywork sheet is the right record

Only use one for work that has been instructed as daywork, or that the contract says may be valued that way. Most daywork disputes start with work that was done on a verbal “just get it done” and written up as daywork afterwards. Before the work starts, get the instruction and write down who gave it, when, and its reference if it has one. That goes at the top of every sheet for the work.

Keep daywork apart from measured work. If a gang spends the morning on the contract works and the afternoon on the instructed extra, only the afternoon goes on the sheet, and the hours should say so.

What to write on it

• The date, project and exact location. One sheet per instruction per day, numbered, so the set can be followed later.
• What was done, specifically. “Break out and remove 6 m of kerb at the north gate for the new drainage connection” can be checked. “Extra works as instructed” can't.
• Labour: each person by name and trade, with start and finish times and the hours on this work. Names matter: they are what the hours are checked against on the timesheets and the allocation.
• Plant: each item, whether it's owned or hired, who operated it, and its working hours. If standing time is to be claimed, record it separately and say why the plant was standing.
• Materials: what was used, the quantity and unit, the supplier, and the delivery ticket number, so the cost can be traced to an invoice.

Getting it signed

The sheet should be signed by the client's representative: the clerk of works, the engineer, or whoever the contract names. Get the signature on the day, or as close to it as you can, while everyone can still remember who was there. Contracts usually set a deadline for handing daywork records in, often within a week or so of the work, so check the daywork clause in yours.

A signature confirms the labour, plant and materials were used. It does not agree the rates or the price, which are worked out afterwards. Don't let that stop you getting it signed: an unsigned sheet is much harder to get paid on.

How the sheet is priced

The contract decides how the resources on the sheet become money, so read it before the first sheet goes in.

• Building contracts, such as the JCT forms, commonly price daywork using the RICS Definition of Prime Cost of Daywork carried out under a Building Contract (third edition, 2007). It sets out what counts as the prime cost of labour, materials and plant, with either percentage additions for overheads and profit or all-inclusive labour rates, as the contract states.
• Civil engineering work often uses the CECA Schedules of Dayworks carried out incidental to contract work, which CECA updates from time to time.
• NEC4 doesn't use dayworks in the same way. Changes are compensation events, assessed on Defined Cost. The daily record matters just as much there: cost the contractor's records can't justify can be disallowed.

Why sheets get knocked back

1. The description is too vague to tell what was done, or where.
2. The hours don't match the timesheets, the allocation or the site diary for the same day.
3. It was signed days or weeks later, or not at all.
4. Plant hours with no operator, or standing time with no reason.
5. Materials with no quantities or delivery tickets.
6. Daywork and measured work mixed on the same sheet.

Most of these come down to the same thing: the sheet has to agree with the rest of the day's record. If the site diary says the gang was on something else that afternoon, the daywork sheet will lose.