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Daily Allocation Sheet Template: Free Construction Allocation Sheet

A ready to use Excel sheet for recording which operatives and plant worked on which activity, for how many hours, on a given day. Structured for NEC4 and JCT Defined Cost records. Built by quantity surveyors.

The template

Print it, copy it into Excel, or use it as the blueprint for your digital form. The structure below is tested across civil engineering, highways, rail, and utilities projects.

Section 1: Header information

Field	What to record	Example
Project Name	Full project name as per the contract	A14 Cambridge to Huntingdon, Section 3
Contract Reference	Your internal contract number	CON-2025-047
NEC4 Option	The pricing mechanism in play	Option C (Target Cost)
Date	Full date: day, date, month, year	Monday 10 March 2025
Week Number	Contract week or programme week	Week 34
Supervisor / Foreman	Name of the person completing the form	J. Ahmed
Section / Location	The part of site the sheet covers	Section 3B, Earthworks Cut 1
Weather Summary	Brief note on conditions (see site diary for full detail)	Heavy rain AM, dry PM

Why the header matters: the contract reference and NEC4 option tell you immediately what evidential standard applies. Under Option C, every allocation sheet feeds into Defined Cost assessment. Under Option A (lump sum), the commercial weight is different. Getting this right in the header stops confusion downstream.

Section 2: Labour allocation

This is the core of the document. Every operative, every trade, every hour. All recorded against the activity they actually worked on.

Column guidance:

• Operative Name: full name. Not "operative 1". When a compensation event is assessed 18 months later, you need to be able to trace this person.
• Trade / Role: groundworker, excavator operator, banksman, concretor, steel fixer, and so on. Not just "labourer". The rate differs and so does the commercial impact.
• Employer: whether direct, agency, or subcontractor, and which subcontractor. This determines which labour schedule rate applies under NEC4 Defined Cost.
• Start / Finish / Break: the basis for calculating hours worked. Never leave this blank and backfill a round number. It won't survive scrutiny.
• Hours Worked: calculated from start, finish and break. Double check the arithmetic.
• Activity Code: links back to your work breakdown structure or programme activity. This is how you connect the allocation sheet to delay analysis. If you don't have formal activity codes, use a simple description like "Excavation Cut 1" or "Drainage Pipe Section 3".
• Notes: any deviation from planned working. Machine breakdowns, standing time, restricted working due to utilities, instructions received. A one line note here can save weeks of argument later.

Section 3: Plant and equipment

Column guidance:

• Registration / ID: you need a unique identifier, not just "excavator". If there are two excavators on site, you need to know which one stood idle.
• Hired (Y/N) and Hire Company: under NEC4 Defined Cost, hired plant is included at the hire rate with a schedule of cost components adjustment. Own plant uses the published schedule rates. The distinction matters for your cost records.
• Hours: claimed plant hours must be supported by contemporaneous records. A hire company invoice alone won't do it if the Project Manager challenges whether the plant was actually working on the compensated activity.
• Notes: record any standing time, breakdowns, or restricted use against the reason. This is your evidence if you need to claim for idle plant.

Section 4: Materials received

Note: the allocation sheet is not a full materials management system. Record what arrives on site and against which activity. Your site diary should carry the narrative detail on any materials issues: damaged goods, wrong spec, or a late delivery that caused a programme impact.

Section 5: Subcontractor summary

Where multiple subcontractors are working, a one line summary per subcontractor keeps the sheet readable without losing the overview.

Why this matters: on NEC4 Options C and D, subcontractor Defined Cost flows up to the main contractor's cost records. If a subcontractor causes or is affected by a compensation event, you need to be able to isolate their hours and costs. A subcontractor summary makes this straightforward.

Section 6: Authorisation

Role	Name	Signature	Date
Foreman / Supervisor completing form	—	—	—
Site Manager reviewed	—	—	—
Project Manager / QS reviewed (if required)	—	—	—

Practical note: on most sites the foreman completes the form at end of shift and the site manager reviews the following morning. On NEC4 contracts, some clients require the Project Manager's representative to countersign. Check your contract. The requirement may be in the Works Information or the Z clauses.

Labour allocation sheet template: the NEC4 fields you cannot afford to miss

Most allocation sheet templates on the internet were built for payroll, not contracts. They track hours well. They don't track Defined Cost evidence. Under NEC4 Options C, D, E, and F, your allocation sheets are a primary input to compensation event assessment. Get these fields right, or you're handing the Project Manager a reason to disallow.

The five NEC4-critical fields

Field	Why it's non-negotiable under NEC4	What happens without it
Trade / role (not just name)	Labour schedule rates vary by trade. The Project Manager assesses CE costs using the schedule of cost components and needs the right rates	Assessment defaults to a blended rate, almost always lower than your actual cost
Employer (direct / agency / sub)	The Defined Cost schedule distinguishes between employed and hired labour	Disputes over which rate applies, and potential disallowed cost
Activity code	Links operative hours to a specific CE for assessment purposes	Impossible to isolate the cost impact of a CE when multiple activities run concurrently
Standing time / idle time notes	Idle plant and labour is a Defined Cost if the CE caused it	No evidence for standing time claims, so the Project Manager assesses nil
Subcontractor identification	Subcontractor Defined Cost is included in the main contractor's CE assessment	Can't demonstrate subcontractor cost impact, so the CE is assessed on main contractor costs only

I've seen these fields missing on allocation sheets from Tier 1 contractors on rail packages worth over £100M. The records existed, but they weren't structured to support NEC4 assessment. The commercial team spent weeks reconstructing evidence that should have been captured daily.

What "Defined Cost" means for your template

Under NEC4 Options C and D (target cost), Defined Cost is calculated using the schedule of cost components. Labour falls under People Costs. The Project Manager can disallow any cost that isn't properly evidenced. Your allocation sheet is the evidence.

Three things your template must do to survive a Defined Cost audit:

• Identify each person by name and trade, so the correct schedule rate can be applied
• Record actual hours worked with start, finish, and break times, not rounded daily totals
• Link hours to an activity or compensation event reference, so costs can be allocated correctly

If your template does those three things consistently, you're in a strong position. If it doesn't, you're handing the Project Manager a reason to disallow.

How to complete the labour allocation sheet template

End-of-shift completion

Complete the allocation sheet at the end of each working shift. Not the next morning. Not on Friday afternoon for the whole week. End of shift.

People forget. The machine breakdown at 11am gets forgotten by 4pm when the site is buzzing again. The subcontractor who left at lunchtime doesn't get recorded. Verbal instructions go unlogged. Memory degrades fast on a construction site, especially on complex multi-activity days.

The five minute rule: if the sheet's been maintained through the day, with a quick note when something changes, end-of-shift completion takes five minutes. If it's taking 20 minutes, someone's completing it retrospectively.

Worked example: machine breakdown on a rail package

Here's how the template works in practice. This is a fictional but realistic scenario. Project: Midlands Rail Electrification Package, NEC4 Option C, contract value £28M. Date: Tuesday 4 February 2025. A 20 tonne excavator (EX-07) breaks down at 10:45 and isn't repaired until 13:30.

The foreman completes the labour section at end of shift:

And in the plant section:

Four months later, when the commercial team submits a compensation event under clause 60.1(2) for a Client-instructed design change to the foundations, the QS can demonstrate: on 4 February, the excavator was already standing idle for 2.75 hours due to breakdown. The CE instruction arrived that afternoon. The time impact is calculated from a clean baseline.

That's the difference a well completed allocation sheet makes. Without those notes, the Project Manager's assessment starts from scratch.

Common completion mistakes

Recording total headcount only, not trade by trade. "12 operatives on site" tells you nothing useful. "3 excavator operators, 4 groundworkers, 2 concretors, 3 banksmen" tells you everything. Trade rates differ, disruption impacts differ, and the Project Manager needs the breakdown to apply the right schedule of cost component rates.

Leaving the activity code blank. It's the most common failure I see. Foremen fill in names and hours but skip the activity code because they don't know the reference off the top of their heads. Fix it by printing the current week's programme activities on the reverse of the form. Or have the QS pre-populate the codes each Monday.

Not recording standing time. If an operative was on site but not productively employed for part of the day, that goes in the notes column. "Standing time 10:00-12:00, crane unavailability" is gold if there's a crane-related CE later. "9 hours worked" with no notes is useless.

Unsigned forms. Authorisation gives the document evidential standing. An unsigned allocation sheet is just a piece of paper with numbers on it. Both the completing foreman and the reviewing site manager should sign it.

Week-in-arrears completion. Some sites complete allocation sheets weekly. Don't. Daily completion is the standard, and anything less destroys the document's credibility as contemporaneous evidence in a compensation event assessment.

How Gather replaces this template

Manual allocation sheets work. They're also slow, inconsistent between foremen, and disconnected from your commercial records. Gather is the digital replacement.

What Gather does differently:

• Site engineers and foremen complete allocation data on a mobile app, at end of shift, on site
• Operative names and trades are selected from a pre-populated list, so there are no free-text errors
• Every entry is time-stamped and GPS-tagged, so nothing is completed retrospectively
• Allocation data is linked directly to the programme and compensation event register
• The QS can review allocation records in real time, not at month end
• NEC4 Defined Cost reports are generated automatically from the allocation data

On a £40M highways package using Gather, the commercial team recovered £1.2M in previously unrecognised compensation event costs across 14 months. The records were always there. They just weren't structured in a way that supported NEC4 assessment until Gather was in place.

Frequently asked questions

What should a daily allocation sheet template include?

A daily allocation sheet template should include a project header (project name, contract reference, date, NEC4 option), a labour section recording each operative's name, trade, employer, start time, finish time, break duration, hours worked, and the activity they worked on, a plant section with equipment identification and hours, a materials receipt section, a subcontractor summary, and an authorisation block for signatures. Templates that only capture total headcount and total hours are not sufficient for NEC4 Defined Cost purposes.

Is there a free daily allocation sheet template for construction?

Yes. A free Excel allocation sheet template is available from Gather Insights. It's structured for NEC4 Defined Cost records and includes dropdown lists for trades, auto-calculation for hours, and a reference sheet for activity codes. Download it directly from this page, with no email required.

What's the difference between an allocation sheet and a site diary?

A site diary is the daily narrative record of site conditions, progress, instructions, visitors, and events. An allocation sheet is a structured labour and plant record that captures who was on site, what they worked on, and for how long. The two documents complement each other: the site diary provides context and narrative, the allocation sheet provides the quantitative detail for cost and delay analysis. See the site diary vs allocation sheet guide for a full comparison.

How often should an allocation sheet be completed?

Daily, at the end of each working shift. Not weekly, not from memory on Friday afternoon, and not by the commercial team reconstructing from timesheets. The allocation sheet derives its evidential value from being contemporaneous: completed at the time by the person present. Weekly completion destroys that value.

Does an allocation sheet need to be signed?

Yes. The person completing the form and the site manager who reviews it should both sign. On some NEC4 contracts, the contract will require the Project Manager's representative to countersign daily records. Check your Works Information and any Z clauses. An unsigned allocation sheet is far harder to rely on as contemporaneous evidence in a compensation event assessment or dispute.

Which NEC4 fields are essential on an allocation sheet?

Trade or role (not just name), employer type (direct, agency, or subcontractor), activity code linking to the programme or CE register, notes on standing time or idle time with the reason, and subcontractor identification. These five fields are what distinguish an allocation sheet that supports Defined Cost assessment from one that just tracks payroll. See the daily allocation sheet guide for the full commercial context.

Can I use an allocation sheet for lump-sum NEC4 contracts?

Yes. Under NEC4 Option A (lump sum) and Option B (remeasured) the Defined Cost rules are different, so you won't be tracking Defined Cost in the same way. But allocation sheets still have value. They evidence labour deployment for delay and disruption claims, they support acceleration arguments, and they provide the factual baseline for any compensation event that requires you to demonstrate the effect on actual cost. Don't skip them just because you're on a lump-sum contract.

What should a construction allocation sheet template capture?

Project identification, date, weather summary, operative names with trades and employer details, start and finish times with break durations, activity codes or descriptions, plant identification and hours, materials deliveries with delivery note references, subcontractor summaries, standing time notes, and authorisation signatures. The what to include in a site diary guide covers the broader records picture, of which the allocation sheet is one component.