September 22, 2026
Three weeks after you priced a job, somebody asks why the wall allowance is what it is. You remember there was a reason. You do not remember the reason.
The information that would answer the question exists. It is a photo somewhere in a phone gallery between a parking receipt and a picture of a delivery note, and a line written in a notebook that is in the van. The drawing is in the takeoff tool. None of the three knows about the other two, and reassembling them costs more than the original measurement did.
Construction photo documentation is only worth doing if you can find it again and it answers something. This article is about what to capture on a site visit, where to keep it so it stays with the job, and what that record can and cannot do when a quantity is challenged.
In Planmetry a project is a container, not just a list of drawings. Alongside the sheets you measure it holds:
Worth being precise about what that means, because it is the main thing to understand before relying on it. These files sit in the project, or in a folder inside it, alongside the drawings. They are not pinned to a point on a sheet and not attached to a particular measurement. The connection is filing: same job, same place. If you need a mark on a specific point of a specific drawing, this is not that — what it solves is the photo and the drawing living in different systems entirely.
The photos worth keeping are the ones that record what the drawing does not show.
The thing that is not on the plan. A service run across the ceiling void the drawings do not mention. An existing wall where the plan shows an opening. The part of the building that makes your measurement right and the drawing wrong.
Condition, on anything you are repricing. On refurbishment work the difference between two rooms of identical size is often entirely in their condition, and condition cannot be described in a quantity. A photo of a failing substrate is what you reach for when somebody compares your rate with the room next door.
The reference you measured against. If you verified a drawing's scale against a door or a grid line on site, photograph what you measured and the tape across it. Saying you checked and showing what you checked are different conversations.
What was there before you started. Existing damage is much easier to discuss when somebody recorded it at the time.
Photos open full screen with a zoom toggle, which matters more than it sounds: the detail that answers the question is usually a small part of a wide shot taken in poor light.
A note attached to the project is not a diary entry. It is the answer to a question somebody will ask later, written while the answer is still in your head.
The notes that earn their place are short and specific:
Notes are edited in an ordinary rich-text editor — headings, bullet lists, checklists, links. You never deal with markup. A note saves itself shortly after you stop typing and again when you close it, with the state shown while it happens, so working in a browser on a phone does not mean holding the page open and hoping.
The checklist format is worth singling out. A note that reads "measure the plant room when access is available / confirm the ceiling height in rooms 12–14 / chase the door schedule" is a working list, and the items still unticked when the price goes out are the ones worth reading again when you write your qualifications.
Search covers the names of the drawings and files in a project, a drawing's address, building and recognised type, the file type, and the opening of each note.
That last part has a practical consequence: the searchable part of a note is its beginning — roughly the first couple of lines, not the whole body. Start a note with the words you would search for: the room, the trade, the drawing number. "Room 14 ceiling height — not dimensioned, assumed 2.7 m from section B-B" is findable. "Had a call this morning about something that came up on site" is not, even if it goes on to say the same thing.
Names matter for the same reason, and files can be renamed in the project after they are uploaded. A photo called "Room 14 existing bulkhead" is worth several called "IMG_4417", and renaming a handful of photos when you get back is a faster job than it sounds.
Schedules, specification extracts and your own working files go in the project alongside everything else. A CSV opens in place as a table — delimiter worked out for you, first row held as a header — so a schedule someone sent you can be read without downloading it. A very large one is truncated in the preview rather than loaded whole, so it is a reading view rather than a place to work. Excel, Word and PowerPoint files are stored with the job and downloaded to open in their own applications — they are filed here rather than viewed here, which is usually all that is needed for a document you only have to consult.
The argument for keeping one is not tidiness. It is that quantities get questioned, and the person questioning them is usually reading a spreadsheet rather than standing in the building. Answering from something you wrote at the time is a different position from reconstructing it from memory.
Be clear about the limits, though. A project full of photos and notes is a working record. It does not give notice, it does not instruct anything, it is not a document register and it does not track revisions. Where the contract requires a notice, an early warning or a confirmation of a verbal instruction, that goes through the route the contract sets out — and the note is what you write it from, not a substitute for writing it.
Within that limit it covers the part that normally goes missing: the reason for anything that is not simply measured off the sheet. The quantity comes from the takeoff, and the drawing reference from noting it as you work (counting symbols on a PDF floor plan covers that habit). The reason is the photo and the note, and it disappears because at the time it feels too obvious to write down.
The split that works is the one most people arrive at anyway: the takeoff is done at a desk, and the phone is for checking and capturing. Takeoff on a phone covers what works in the field and what does not — photographing and noting sit firmly in the part that does, because neither needs precision from a fingertip.
The habit that makes it work: when you are on site for any other reason, photograph the things the drawings do not show and write the note before you get back in the van. That is the one moment when it costs almost nothing.
Take a job in progress, put its drawings in a project, and add the two or three photos you already have on your phone for it. The test is the next question you get about that job: how much of the answer is in the project, and how much is still only in your head.
