Home/Our work/Construction site tools
The paperwork chase, done before smoko
GNB run five or six crews a day across two motorway projects. Every crew files a prestart, a site diary and a timesheet. Somebody had to check all of it, by hand, every morning.
Access to the register is restricted to registered users.
| Client | GNB Energy |
| What we built | Internal compliance tool |
| Industry | Electrical and civil |
| Where | Brisbane and the Gold Coast |
See it run
The whole morning check, start to finish
What goes in, what comes back, and what you do with it. Press play, or step through it at your own pace.
Step 1 — add the day's files
Step 2 — what came back
Step 3 — who to chase, hardest evidence first
Step 4 — person by person, crew by crew
Illustrative names and figures — 17 on the plan, 4 crews. Every file is read on the device; nothing is uploaded.
The job
Every morning a supervisor asks the same three questions. Did every crew do their prestart? Did every crew write a site diary? Did everyone put in a timesheet? Answering it properly means opening four separate exports and comparing names across all of them.
Why it was hard
Crews change every day, so last week's list is no help. The daily plan says who is in which crew, the prestart register says who signed on, the site diary says what each crew did, and the timesheet export says who claimed hours. Nothing joins them up. Checking one day properly took about twenty minutes, so most days it did not get done — and the gaps surfaced at the end of the month when the paperwork was needed for a claim.
What we built
A register that takes the four exports the site already produces and does the cross-check in about ten seconds. It reads the roster and the crew split out of the plan, then checks every crew and every person against it. Nobody fills in anything extra for it to work, which is the main reason it gets used.
Ordered by certainty, not by count
What comes back is not a report to read. It is a list of names to ring, ordered by how certain the gap is. Someone who signed a prestart but filed no timesheet was definitely on site, so that goes to the top. Someone with no prestart, no diary and no timesheet may not have turned up at all — three independent records agreeing is worth knowing, and it is a different conversation.
Production from the same files
The inspection register already records what was installed and signed off. Read across a week it gives real quantities — metres of conduit, pits by type, daywork sheets — cross-checked against what the crews described in their own diary notes. Where the two disagree, that is the finding. Work described but never inspected is not claimable yet.
How it turned out
A morning check that took twenty minutes now takes seconds, and it runs every day rather than when someone has time. Items are ticked off as they are chased and the tick syncs across the team, so nobody rings the same bloke twice. Every file is read in the browser on the user's own device — site diaries, timesheets and prestart registers carry names, hours and daywork values, so none of it is uploaded anywhere.
What it checks
Six checks, and every one of them names a person
A count of missing timesheets is not actionable. Every finding resolves to a named person or a named crew, with the evidence behind it.
Daily crew prestart
One per crew, signed by every member. Because the register records signatures individually, a crew can show a prestart while two of its members never signed it — flagged separately from a crew with no prestart at all.
Site diary
One entry per crew that worked. Entries are matched to crews by the crew number in the text, and failing that by which crew the author belongs to.
Timesheet
One for everyone on the daily plan. People who submitted hours without being rostered are surfaced too — usually the plan is out of date rather than the timesheet being wrong.
Timesheet wording
Descriptions checked against the project's approved activity names, split by activity, with daywork sheet numbers present. Blank descriptions and duplicate lines come out in the same pass.
Activity split
If a crew's diary says they installed pits and conduits, every member should hold a timesheet line for each. Where they do not, hours land on the wrong cost code.
Hours and fatigue
Overtime above the standard shift is recorded. Anything past the project's red line — ten hours by default, travel included — is escalated as excessive rather than routine.
Built to fit
Two projects, one register
GNB run 1834 at Dohles Rock Road and 2138 at Coomera Central. The two write their daily plans differently, so the register reads both.
Activity names, standard shift, break deduction, the overtime limit and name shortcuts are held against the project number and load automatically. One contractor, several jobs, the same register.
It reads what already exists
The planning email, the printed site diary, the timesheet CSV and the inspections register. A photograph of any of them works too, and anything read from a photo is marked as unverified rather than treated as fact.
Nobody rings the same person twice
Three or four people work the same chase list. Items are ticked off as they are handled and the tick appears for everyone else with the register open.
More work
Other things we have built
GNB Energy
Electrical & civil · Queensland
A website that had to work for two very different people — big builders checking if GNB can do the job, and sparkies looking for work.
Read the story →Retail business
Retail · Two stores
Rosters in one spreadsheet, sales in another, stock in a group chat. We put all three in one place the owner can open on a phone.
Read the story →Next step
Got something like this?
Tell us what is not working. First chat is free, and if we reckon you do not need us we will say so.