Evidence & Claim Documentation: Overview

About Evidence & Claim Documentation

Evidence documentation is the record you keep in case something is disputed later. A delay caused by late design information. Damage caused by another contractor. An instruction given on site that changed the scope. A neighbour who says the works cracked their wall. Months later, the side with dated photos, a named author and a record that was not changed afterwards usually wins the argument.

Claim management is what you do with that record. You notify the other party in time, document the event and its effect, and build the claim for time or money from the evidence. Contracts set strict deadlines for the notice, and a claim with a missed notice or no contemporaneous record is often lost however justified it is.

The evidence has to be collected when the event happens, by the people on site, as part of their normal work. Nobody can go back and photograph a flooded excavation three weeks later.

When Evidence Is Needed

• A delay or disruption caused by the client, the design team or another contractor, for example late drawings, late access or a late decision.
• An instruction from the client or the architect that changes scope, cost or time.
• Damage to your work caused by others, or damage to third-party property claimed against you.
• Unforeseen conditions, for example contaminated ground or existing structures that differ from the drawings.
• A dispute about whether work was done, done correctly, or done on time.
• Payment disputes, where the other side contests the work done.

Terminology

Whatever the contract calls it, the evidence has to answer the same questions: what happened, where exactly, when, who recorded it, what effect it had, and that the record was not changed afterwards.

What PlanRadar Covers

An evidence record in PlanRadar is a ticket. The ticket carries photos and videos, a position on the plan, a description, a category and the date of the event. PlanRadar adds what makes the record hold up:

• Who and when. Every change to a ticket, every comment and every attachment added or removed is recorded in the ticket journal with user and time. The journal can be included in ticket reports.
• Photo dates. Attachments show when they were added and, where the photo carries it in its metadata, when it was taken. The mobile app can add the GPS position to the photo metadata.
• Locking and signatures. A ticket can be locked so that its fields and attachments can no longer be changed, and signed by up to 10 people with name and time.
• 360° context. SiteView runs record the whole site on a given date, positioned on the plan. People in the images are blurred automatically.
• Documents. Correspondence, notices, drawings and their versions are stored in Documents, with an activity log of who uploaded or changed what.

PlanRadar does not decide whether a claim is justified, and it does not replace legal advice or the formal notice your contract requires. It makes sure that when the notice goes out, the evidence behind it already exists, is dated and attributed, and has not been changed.

Roles and Workflow

Roles

The person recording the event must be an in-house user, because subcontractors cannot create tickets. Subcontractors can add photos and comments to tickets assigned to them, for example when a trade documents damage to its own work. Read more in User Types.

Workflow

The process runs in four stages: record, assess and notify, freeze, retrieve.

1. Record. On the day of the event, the site manager creates an evidence ticket on the plan with photos, a description and the claim category.
2. Assess and notify. The project manager reviews new evidence tickets every week, decides which events need a notice, sends it within the contractual deadline, and stores the notice in Documents.
3. Freeze. Once an event is documented and notified, the ticket is locked so that the record cannot be changed. Later observations go into comments.
4. Retrieve. When the claim is prepared, the evidence tickets of the period are filtered and exported as a report with photos and journal, together with the SiteView runs and the site diary of the same days.

Each stage is explained in Evidence & Claim Documentation: Workflows in PlanRadar.

The Example in These Articles

A general contractor builds a school extension over 18 months while the existing school stays in use. The contract requires notice of any delaying event within 14 days. During the project, revised structural drawings arrive late, the school closes the access road for exam weeks, and a scaffolding company damages the new façade. The site manager records each event on the day, the project manager sends the notices, and the extension of time claim at the end is built from the tickets.

The example uses one form named Evidence, a Claim category list, one plan per floor plus a site plan, and a weekly SiteView run. Where a decision could reasonably be made another way, a short note points out the alternative.

Planning Your Evidence Setup

One Ticket per Event

One event, one ticket. The late structural drawing is one ticket. The access road closure is one ticket. If the closure lasts three weeks, it stays one ticket, with photos and comments added on the days it continues.

Do not collect evidence in the daily site report alone. The site report records the day. The evidence ticket records the event across all the days it lasts, and the claim is built per event. Keep both and refer from one to the other. Read more in Site Reports: Overview.

Which Fields?

• Claim category as a list: Late information, Access, Instruction, Damage by others, Unforeseen conditions, Weather, Other. This is the field you filter on when you build the claim.
• Event date as a date field, the day the event happened. The ticket's creation date is recorded automatically, but the event may have started before the ticket was created.
• Notice due as the due date: the event date plus the notice period from your contract. Assign the ticket to the project manager responsible for the notice, who gets a reminder before the due date.
• Notice sent on as a date field.
• Effect as a long text field: what the event stopped or changed, which trades stood idle, which areas were affected.
• Photos before and Photos after as attachment fields where the state before and after matters, for example for damage.

Every value you want to filter or count has to be a list, a date or a number field. Read more in Field Types.

How Is the Evidence Frozen?

An edited record is weaker evidence. Decide when the ticket is frozen and how:

• Enable Locking in the form settings. Lock the ticket once the event is documented and the notice is sent. A locked ticket's fields and attachments can no longer be changed. Status, assignee, receivers, progress and comments stay editable, so later developments are added as comments. Read more in Lock a Ticket.
• Where the other party's site staff agree the facts on site, for example the extent of damage, have them sign the ticket. Signing locks it. Read more in Sign a Ticket.
• Unlocking needs the Account permission and removes all signatures. Keep that permission with as few people as possible.

The journal records every change with user and time whether the ticket is locked or not. Locking prevents the change. The journal shows that none was made. Read more in Track Activity on a Ticket in the Journal.

Signatures and locking are available on Pro and Enterprise accounts created after February 2022.

How Are Photos Taken?

• Take one wide photo that shows where, and one close photo that shows what.
• Photograph with the PlanRadar app from inside the ticket, so that the photo is attached on the spot.
• Allow GPS positions for photos in the app settings, so that the position is stored in the photo metadata. Read more in Add Attachments to Tickets and Application Settings in the Mobile App.
• If you need to mark something on a photo, take a second photo and annotate that one with the photo editor, so that the unmarked original is kept. Read more in Photo Editor.
• Videos can be up to 2 minutes and are useful for water ingress or vibration.

Where Do Notices and Correspondence Go?

Store every notice, letter and email about an event in Documents, in a folder per event or per claim category, and attach a copy to the evidence ticket. The ticket then shows the evidence and the notice together. Document Management is available on Pro and Enterprise accounts created after February 2022. Read more in Attach Documents to Tickets via Document Management in the Webapp and View Activity Log for Files & Folders in the Webapp.

What to Avoid

• Recording the event at the end of the week. The journal shows when the ticket was created, and a ticket created ten days after the event is not contemporaneous.
• Several events in one ticket. They will be notified, assessed and claimed separately.
• Photos without a plan position. "Somewhere on the east side" loses in a dispute.
• Editing the description after the notice went out. Add a comment instead.
• Evidence on someone's phone. If it is not in a ticket, it is gone when the phone or the person is.
• Treating the ticket as the notice. The contract prescribes how a notice is given. Send it that way and store it.

AI Support for Evidence & Claim Documentation

An AI agent only ever creates a ticket, a comment or an email. It cannot change, lock or delete evidence. Read more in Create & Manage Your AI Agents.

Steps to Document Evidence in PlanRadar

Evidence & Claim Documentation: Workflows in PlanRadar explains each stage: set up the form and folders, record an event on site, assess and notify, freeze the record, and retrieve the evidence for a claim.

Additional Possibilities

• Record a weekly SiteView run, so that the state of every area is documented on dates nobody thought would matter. Read more in SiteView.
• Place evidence tickets on the 360° image where the event is. Read more in Add Tickets to 360° Images in the Webapp.
• Compare two dates side by side in SiteView. Read more in View & Navigate 360° Images.
• Record events offline. The mobile app stores tickets and photos without signal and syncs later. Read more in Working Offline.
• Use the daily site diary for weather, workforce and hours lost, which the claim needs alongside the event tickets. Read more in Site Reports: Overview.
• Record existing damage before the works start, so that claims against you can be answered. Read more in Condition Surveys: Overview.
• Export the whole project with all tickets, photos and documents as a ZIP file for your lawyer. Read more in Export a Project in the Webapp.