What Owners Should Require From Their General Contractor: Daily Reports, Photos and Updates
Most owners find out what happened on their project by asking. They call the PM, wait for a photo, and piece together the week from emails. The fix is cheap and happens before the job starts: write down what reporting you expect from your general contractor, how often, and where you will see it.
This guide gives owners and developers a checklist of what to require, a weekly summary format, and sample language you can hand to your attorney. Not set up with your contractor yet? See how to get jobsite updates from your general contractor.
The four things to require
1. A daily report for every workday. Work completed by area, manpower and hours by company (including subs), weather and its impact, deliveries, inspections and results, delays with cause, safety incidents, and visitors. Signed or submitted by the superintendent the same day.
2. Subcontractor reporting, collected by the general contractor. You usually do not contract with the subs, so require the general contractor to get a daily report from every sub on site and roll it up. Missing sub reports are where manpower counts turn into guesses.
3. Dated, captioned photos. Each photo tied to a date and a location, with a short caption. Before cover-up photos for anything going behind walls, ceilings or under slab.
4. A weekly one-page summary. What changed since last week, schedule status against the baseline, open owner decisions with needed-by dates, and the top three risks with who owns each one.
What a good weekly owner summary looks like
Keep it to one page. If it needs a decision from you, it should say so in the first three lines.
| Section | What it answers |
|---|---|
| Status | On track, at risk or behind, in one sentence |
| Completed this week | By area or floor |
| Next two weeks | Planned work and inspections |
| Decisions needed from owner | Item, needed-by date, impact if late |
| Top risks | Risk, who owns it, next step |
| Manpower trend | Total and by trade, from the daily reports |
| Photos | Five to ten captioned highlights |
The numbers in the summary should match the daily reports. If the summary says 46 workers and the daily reports say 41, ask which is right.
Sample contract language
Plain-English starting point only. This is not legal advice; have your attorney adapt it to your contract form.
Daily Reports. Contractor shall prepare a daily report for each day work is performed, including work completed by location, labor by company and trade with hours, equipment, weather and its effect on the work, deliveries, inspections and results, delays and their causes, safety incidents, and visitors. Contractor shall obtain a daily report from each subcontractor performing work that day and include subcontractor labor and hours in its report. Daily reports shall be made available to Owner within one (1) business day.
Photographs. Contractor shall take dated photographs showing the progress of the work and shall take photographs of concealed work before it is covered. Photographs shall be labeled with date and location and made available to Owner with the daily reports.
Weekly Summary. Contractor shall provide Owner a written weekly summary of progress, schedule status, open items requiring Owner decision with required response dates, and significant risks.
Access. Contractor shall provide Owner with read access to daily reports, photographs and project files in a single location for the duration of the project and shall deliver a complete export at closeout.
How to check it is working
- Week one: open three daily reports. Do they list every sub that was on site?
- Each pay app: compare billed progress against what the daily reports and photos show.
- Each change order: ask which daily reports document the extra work.
- Monthly: look for gaps. Missing days are easier to fix in month two than at closeout.
Make it easy for your general contractor
Reporting requirements stick when they cost the field almost nothing. Superintendents and foremen are already busy; a requirement that adds an hour of typing every night gets skipped by week three. Ask your general contractor how they will collect reports from their subs, not only whether they will.
How Cascade helps
Cascade Technology is SMS-first field intelligence for general contractors and subcontractors. Superintendents and foremen text in their day, along with their subs, and Cascade uses AI to turn those texts into daily reports with manpower and hours by sub and photos. The Cascade owner portal is free for owners: your general contractor adds you to the project and shares updates, photos, reports and files, and you get email or text alerts and one feed you can filter by photos, reports or files. You can also ask plain-English questions about anything your contractor has shared with you. Owners are added by their general contractor. Scope: Daily reports, manpower and hours by sub, photos, toolbox talks, pre-task plans (JHA), safety incidents and corrective actions, project + schedule planning, automatic sub reminders, analytics, plain-English answers and a free owner portal.
General contractors using Cascade see 95%+ sub daily report compliance. Subcontractor access is free, onboarding and integration are free, and the general contractor plan starts with a one-month pilot with no contract lock-in. Will beat Raken's prices, guaranteed. See Cascade for owners.
Frequently asked questions
What reports should a general contractor give the owner?
At minimum: a daily report with work completed, manpower by sub, weather, deliveries, inspections, delays and photos, plus a weekly one-page summary with schedule status, open owner decisions with due dates, and the top risks. Ask for both in writing in the contract.
Should owners get daily reports or just weekly updates?
Both, used differently. The weekly summary is what you read. The daily reports are the record you rely on when a schedule, change order or pay app question comes up later. Require that daily reports are available to you within one business day, even if you only open them when you need them.
Can an owner require subcontractor daily reports?
Owners usually contract with the general contractor, not the subs, so the clean way is to require the general contractor to collect a daily report from every sub on site and include sub manpower and hours in its own daily report.
How should a general contractor share photos with the owner?
Dated, captioned photos tied to a location, shared in one place the owner can search later. A camera roll dump in an email thread is hard to find in six months.
Is this sample contract language legal advice?
No. It is a plain-English starting point. Have your attorney fit it to your contract form and project.