The one-page weekly report to the owner
Your weekly report runs to eight pages: every trade's head count, forty photos and the minutes of three meetings. On Friday the owner's representative calls to say she has read it twice and still does not know whether the job finishes in March. The report had everything except the answer.
Weekly reports grow long because including everything feels safer than deciding what matters. The owner reads for three things: whether the job is on time and on budget, what is coming, and what you need from them. When those answers are buried, the owner phones — or stops reading and is surprised later.
The page, top to bottom
- Headline: one or two plain sentences on where the job stands against the completion date and the budget.
- Decisions needed from the owner, each with the date you need it and what happens if it is late.
- Progress this week against what you planned, by area or milestone, with a few quantities.
- The next two weeks: main activities, inspections and deliveries, and any noise, shutdown or access change the owner will notice.
- Risks: the two or three things that could move the date or the cost, and what you are doing about each.
- Changes: pending and approved, with running totals and any effect on time.
- Two to four photos, each captioned with where and what — more in using photos in client updates.
Common mistakes
- Reporting activity ("crews busy on level 3") instead of progress against the plan.
- Hiding bad news in the middle of page three.
- Listing decisions needed without a date or a consequence.
- Changing the format every week, so the owner cannot compare one report with the last.
Checklist
Before you send it
- The headline answers time and money
- Each decision needed has a date and a consequence
- Progress is compared with the plan
- The next two weeks include disruptions
- Two or three risks, each with an action
- Change totals, pending and approved
- Captioned photos, with detail attached
Check your understanding
Why put the decisions needed from the owner second, right after the headline?
Show the answer
It is the only section that asks the owner to act, and every day it goes unread uses time the schedule may not have. Near the top, with a date and a consequence, it gets answered on Monday instead of discovered at the next meeting. It also records that you asked, and when.
