1Gather
Best for: UK contractors and client-side teams on NEC or target-cost contracts who want the diary to recover money, not just record the day.
If all you need is a tidy daily report, several tools further down this list do that well and cost less. Gather is for the team that suspects it is leaving money on the table through compensation events nobody logged in time.
Gather is an AI site diary and commercial record platform. Site teams capture the day in about five minutes. The difference is what happens next: an AI QS agent reads every entry the way a senior quantity surveyor would, and flags potential compensation events, delays, and disruption patterns before the clause 61.3 eight-week time bar expires.
Capture and evidence: fast mobile capture with timestamped photos, weather, and location, structured so the record substantiates a CE later. AI capability: genuine detection, not a writing assistant — around 40% more compensation events than manual diary review, and roughly 70% less diary admin. Commercial awareness: the moat — Gather connects activity to entitlement and tracks the eight-week clock. UK fit: built by quantity surveyors and contract experts, with rail and infrastructure heritage. Where it stops: not a general no-code forms builder or full project-management suite. Pricing posture: per project, not per seat.
Will built Gather after nearly losing £20 million on the North West Electrification Programme. The records existed. They were scattered across emails, spreadsheets, site vehicles, and a supervisor's notebook nobody could find, and by the time the team assembled the evidence, the commercial records position had evaporated. That is the gap Gather closes.
2Site Diary (Script & Go)
Best for: teams that want a simple, fast, reliable daily site report and nothing more complicated.
The clean, focused daily reporting app that ranks at the top of this search for good reason. It records timestamped field data, photos, and custom forms, then generates exportable daily reports and a live dashboard. More than 1,000 companies use it.
Where it wins: simplicity, on web, iOS, and Android. Where it stops: no AI to read the record, no awareness of NEC compensation events or time bars. A capture tool, not a recovery tool. Pricing posture: tiered with a free trial, exact rates quoted on request.
3Sitemate / Dashpivot
Best for: teams that want to digitise a wide range of paper forms with a flexible no-code builder.
A no-code documentation platform positioned as "the Atlassian for the built world." Its strongest card is breadth: 100+ templates and a form builder. The site diary product now advertises AI-assisted diary creation.
Where it wins: template flexibility and a strong mobile app. Where it stops: AI helps write the diary, it does not detect commercial events. No NEC4 understanding. Pricing posture: published per-user rates from £20.52 to £66.42 per user per month on a one-year term, with enterprise pricing above 150 employees.
4Novade
Best for: larger operations running many sites that want field documentation and workflows centralised.
A field operations platform with a capable site diary at its core. Captures timestamped photos and progress data, auto-generates PDF/Excel reports, centralises documentation across multiple worksites. A separate Novade AI Suite is offered alongside.
Where it wins: multi-site scale and automated reporting. Where it stops: no NEC4 or compensation-event intelligence; APAC-origin rather than UK contract practice. Pricing posture: freemium, free for up to five users and five projects, quoted above that.
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