2026 buyer's guide

Best Site Diary Software UK (2026 Guide)

Q: Which site diary software is best for UK NEC4 contracts?

Gather is the only tool built around NEC. It reads every diary entry with an AI QS agent and flags potential compensation events before the clause 61.3 eight-week time bar expires. Other tools record site activity well but have no NEC4 or time-bar awareness.

An honest 2026 guide to the best site diary software for UK construction. Compare Site Diary, Sitemate, Novade, Raken, Fieldwire and Gather.

8 tools compared 7 ranking criteria Pricing verified July 2026

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Gather shift diary submitted, all six sections complete — The site diary, captured in minutes

Site diary software is a tool that records what happened on a construction site each day, such as labour, plant, weather, progress, delays, and photos, in a single searchable system instead of a paper book or a Word file. The best tool for you turns on one question most buyers skip: do you need to record the day, or recover money from it?

Job one: record the day

Capture labour, plant, weather, progress and photos fast, then produce a tidy, shareable daily report. Almost every tool on this list is built for this job, and several do it brilliantly.

Site Diary · Sitemate · Novade · Raken · BuildPass

Job two: recover money from it

Read what was captured, spot the compensation event hiding in it, and notify before the NEC clause 61.3 eight-week time bar closes. Very few tools even attempt this job.

Gather

That question sorts this whole market. Almost every site diary app is built to capture activity and produce a tidy daily report. Very few read what you captured and tell you a compensation event happened before the NEC clause 61.3 eight-week time bar closes. Both jobs matter. They are not the same product, and most teams only realise the gap during final account preparation, when the notice period has expired and the negotiating position has gone.

This guide compares the eight site diary tools UK contractors and client-side teams shortlist most often, judged on capture speed, evidence quality, reporting, AI, commercial awareness, UK fit, and pricing. Gather built this page and sells one of the tools on it, so we have been direct about where the others are stronger.

How We Ranked Them

Seven criteria, weighted toward what changes commercial outcomes on site:

Speed of captureHow fast a site team can log a day from a phone, in the rain, with gloves on.

Evidence qualityTimestamped photos, location, weather, and records that survive a dispute.

ReportingAutomated, shareable daily reports without an evening of formatting.

AI capabilityWhether AI just speeds up writing the diary, or actually reads it and tells you something you missed.

Commercial awarenessNEC compensation events, time bars, and revenue recovery, not just record keeping.

UK fitBritish terminology, UK contract forms, and a team that answers the phone in local hours.

Pricing posturePer user, per project, freemium, or enterprise quote, and how transparent the vendor is.

This is not a fake "our tool wins everything" list. Most tools here are genuinely better than Gather at pure field capture breadth, and the page says so. Gather sits at number one on a clearly stated, commercial-recovery-weighted set of criteria, and the page tells the reader plainly when a simpler field-first tool is the better buy.

Quick Comparison

At a glance, the winner for each job:

Gather · NEC commercial recovery

Site Diary · Simple daily reports

Sitemate · No-code forms

Novade · Multi-site operations

Raken · Reports plus labour tracking

Fieldwire · Tasks plus drawings

BuildPass · AI voice capture

Ed Controls · Snagging plus quality

Tool	Best for	Capture speed	Evidence quality	AI	Commercial awareness	UK fit	Pricing posture
GatherOur pick	NEC and target-cost commercial teams	Fast (5 min)	Strong, claim-ready	Yes, AI QS agent reads the diary	High: CE detection and 8-week time bar	Global platform, rail and infrastructure heritage	Per project
Site Diary (Script & Go)	Simple, fast daily reports	Fast	Strong (photos, timestamps)	None stated	Low: records only	Good, UK presence	£15 per user per month
Sitemate / Dashpivot	Customisable no-code forms	Fast	Strong	AI-assisted diary drafting	Low: no NEC4	Growing UK presence	£15.30 to £69.30 per user per month
Novade	Multi-site field operations	Fast	Strong	Separate Novade AI Suite	Low: no NEC4	APAC origin, UK site	Freemium, then from $39 per user
Raken	Daily reports plus labour and production	Fast	Strong	None stated	Low: no NEC4	US origin, UK usage	Free trial, then quote
Fieldwire (Hilti)	Task and drawing management	Medium	Good	None stated	Low: no NEC4	Hilti-owned, UK usage	$39 to $89 per user per month
BuildPass	AI voice-to-text diary capture	Very fast (voice)	Good	Yes, voice diary and AI summaries	Low: no NEC4	AU origin, UK available	Quote-based, per admin user
Ed Controls	Snagging, defects and quality	Medium	Good (drawing-linked)	None stated	Low: quality not commercial	Dutch origin, UK support line	From around £59 per user per month

Pricing note: these vendors do not price the same way. Site Diary, Sitemate, Ed Controls and Fieldwire publish per-user rates, Fieldwire’s in US dollars. Novade runs a freemium model with paid plans from $39 per user per month. Gather is priced per project, not per seat. Ask each vendor to normalise against your project count and user count before you compare the numbers.

The 8 Tools, In Detail

1Gather

Best for: 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.

Gather QS AI Agent showing compensation events requiring action with NEC clause references and notice deadlines — The AI QS agent flags potential compensation events

40%more compensation events identified than manual diary review

70%less diary administration workload for site teams

Capture and evidence: fast mobile capture with timestamped photos, weather, and location, structured so the record substantiates a CE later.
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.

"Using Gather, we were able to slash 11% of total project cost on the TfL 4LM project. The platform saved us at least 100 hours on providing assurance documents alone. I was so impressed, I decided to invest in Gather."

Nick Mansell · Senior Project Manager, Transport for London

Capture

Evidence

Commercial

OriginGlobal platform

PricingPer project

AIAI QS agent

Verdict: if you want a diary that also protects your commercial position on NEC and target-cost work, Gather is built for that job.

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2Site Diary (Script & Go)

Best for: teams that want a simple, fast, reliable daily site report and nothing more complicated.

Background: Made by Script and Go, a software company headquartered in Rennes, France, with a UK office in Birmingham.

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: published at £15 per user per month with a 14-day free trial, and discounted pricing on request for teams over 50 users.

Capture

Evidence

Commercial

OriginFrench origin, UK office

Pricing£15 per user per month

Verdict: the simplest, fastest way to produce a tidy daily report, with no commercial-recovery layer attached.

3Sitemate / Dashpivot

Best for: teams that want to digitise a wide range of paper forms with a flexible no-code builder.

Background: An Australian-founded software company that has been expanding its presence in the UK and Europe.

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 £15.30 to £69.30 per user per month on a one-year term, depending on plan and user volume, with an enterprise model for larger organisations.

Capture

Evidence

Commercial

OriginAustralian origin, growing UK

Pricing£15.30 to £69.30 per user

Verdict: the most flexible no-code form builder on this list, best for teams digitising a wide range of paper forms.

4Novade

Best for: larger operations running many sites that want field documentation and workflows centralised.

Background: A field operations software company founded in the APAC market, now used across multiple regions.

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: free for up to five users and five projects, then from $39 per user per month, with higher tiers quoted.

Capture

Evidence

Commercial

OriginAPAC origin, UK site

PricingFreemium, then from $39 per user

Verdict: the strongest choice for centralising field documentation across many sites at scale.

5Raken

Best for: teams that want a strong daily report plus labour and production tracking in one place.

Background: A US software company built around field reporting for construction crews.

A field management platform built around the daily report. Crews add notes, photos, and video on mobile, syncing to a web portal that produces shareable PDF reports. Adds time and production tracking, safety and quality checklists, and equipment tracking.

Where it wins: the daily report plus labour and production data, high field adoption.
Where it stops: no AI layer, no NEC4 or commercial-recovery awareness. US-origin.
Pricing posture: free trial, then quote-based.

Capture

Evidence

Commercial

OriginUS origin, UK usage

PricingFree trial, then quote

Verdict: a solid daily report tool that also tracks labour and production, with no AI or NEC4 awareness.

6Fieldwire (Hilti)

Best for: teams whose main need is task and drawing management, with daily reports attached.

Background: Founded as an independent jobsite management platform and acquired by the Hilti Group.

Now owned by Hilti, strongest on task management and drawing markup. Generates daily and weekly PDF reports, including 360-degree photos and video, and digitises forms such as daily reports and RFIs.

Where it wins: drawing markup, punch lists, and task coordination.
Where it stops: the diary is one feature inside a task tool. No AI diary review, no NEC4 or commercial-event detection.
Pricing posture: published rates of $39 to $89 per user per month billed annually, depending on plan, which UK buyers pay in GBP equivalent.

Capture

Evidence

Commercial

OriginHilti-owned, UK usage

Pricing$39 to $89 per user

Verdict: strongest for drawing markup and task coordination, with the diary as a secondary feature.

7BuildPass

Best for: teams that want the fastest possible capture through AI voice notes.

Background: An Australian construction management software company.

A construction management platform with a genuinely useful AI angle on the diary. Record a voice note while walking the site and it converts to a written description. Site attendance and weather pull in automatically, and an AI daily log summary tool condenses entries across a date range.

Where it wins: capture speed. Voice-to-text and auto-summary make the diary almost effortless.
Where it stops: the AI writes and summarises, it does not assess entitlement. No NEC4 compensation-event detection or time-bar tracking. Australian in origin.
Pricing posture: quote-based, priced per admin user with unlimited projects.

Capture

Evidence

Commercial

OriginAU origin, UK available

PricingQuote-based, per admin user

Verdict: the fastest capture experience here thanks to voice to text, though it stops at writing and summarising, not assessing entitlement.

8Ed Controls

Best for: teams focused on snagging, defect management, and quality control alongside site records.

Background: Made by Dutchview, a Dutch software company based in the Netherlands, with an active UK operation.

A snagging and quality assurance platform made by Dutch company Dutchview, actively sold in the UK with a site and support line. Its strength is snagging and defects: observations are recorded instantly, tickets are linked to drawings, and quality checks and reports are compiled quickly. Works online and offline.

Where it wins: drawing-linked snagging and quality management, UK support in local hours.
Where it stops: a quality and defects tool first. The commercial side, NEC compensation events, time bars, and revenue recovery, is not what it is built for.
Pricing posture: published, from around £59 per user per month, with higher tiers and per-project options; only the on-premise version is priced on request.

Capture

Evidence

Commercial

OriginDutch origin (Dutchview)

PricingFrom £59 per user

Verdict: built for snagging and quality control, not for tracking compensation events or time bars.

"We handed over the Tideway MNTLD Secondary Lining Works ahead of schedule. Gather played an important role in this, providing us with a tool to capture consistent, structured data from the site and make effective, timely decisions."

Rob Margariti-Smith · Senior PM, Costain

Also Worth a Look

If your search is broader than a pure site diary, a few more tools come up. None of them detect compensation events from site records, so treat them as field-documentation choices rather than commercial-recovery ones.

Work WalletDigital site diary inside a wider site-management suite.

BauMasterDigital site diary inside a wider site-management suite.

ProcoreDaily logs as one module of an enterprise construction platform. Worth a look only if you are buying a whole system for a large organisation rather than a diary.

How to Choose

Need simple daily reports?Buy Site Diary.

Need no-code forms breadth?Buy Sitemate.

Need multi-site scale?Buy Novade or Raken.

Need speed via voice?Buy BuildPass.

Worried about missed CEs and time bars?Buy Gather.

Buy for capture and you should be looking at Site Diary, Sitemate, Novade, or Raken, sorted by how much breadth and scale you need. Buy for speed and you will like BuildPass. Buy for quality and snagging and Ed Controls fits. Buy for drawings and tasks and Fieldwire makes sense.

Buy for recovery, because you are worried about missed compensation events and expired time bars on NEC or target-cost work, and Gather is the tool built for that job. Most serious commercial teams need capture and recovery. The cheapest mistake is assuming that because your diary looks tidy, it is also finding the money buried inside it. It is not, unless something is reading it.

Source: Gather Insights, the AI-powered site diary and commercial record management platform for UK construction.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is site diary software?

Site diary software is a tool that records what happened on a construction site each day, such as labour, plant, weather, progress, delays, and photos, in a single searchable system instead of a paper book or a Word file. The best tools also make those records easy to share and to rely on when a claim is disputed later.

What is the best site diary software?

There is no single best tool, because there are two jobs. For simple daily reporting, Site Diary, Sitemate, Novade, and Raken are strong. For UK teams on NEC or target-cost contracts who need the diary to detect compensation events before the eight-week time bar closes, Gather is purpose-built. Many teams weigh capture against commercial recovery.

Which site diary software is best for UK NEC4 contracts?

Gather is the only tool on this list built around NEC. It reads every diary entry with an AI QS agent and flags potential compensation events before the clause 61.3 eight-week time bar expires. The other tools record site activity well but have no NEC4 or time-bar awareness.

Does site diary software use AI?

Some does. BuildPass uses AI to turn voice notes into written diary entries and to summarise logs. Sitemate advertises AI-assisted diary creation, and Novade offers a separate AI suite. Gather goes further: its AI reads the finished diary to detect compensation events, identifying around 40% more than manual review.

How much does site diary software cost?

It varies by model. Site Diary publishes £15 per user per month, Ed Controls starts around £59 per user per month, Sitemate publishes per-user rates by plan and volume, and Fieldwire publishes $39 to $89 per user per month billed annually. Novade is free for small teams, with paid plans from $39 per user per month. Gather is priced per project rather than per seat. Because the models differ, ask each vendor to normalise a quote against your project count and user count before comparing.

What is the eight-week time bar in NEC4?

Under NEC4 clause 61.3, a contractor must notify a compensation event within eight weeks of becoming aware of it. Miss that deadline and you lose the right to additional time or money, however valid the underlying event was. A site diary that is read for events, not just filled in, is what protects that entitlement.

See what's hiding in your diaries

See what your site diaries are hiding

Gather's AI QS agent reads every diary entry and flags potential compensation events before the clause 61.3 time bar closes. 40% more compensation events found than manual review, and roughly 70% less diary admin.

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Gather reporting dashboard showing shift records, avg shift score, access score and lost time

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