Construction /Document Generation live field guide · 9 min

Photo to Progress Report

Identifies the trade work in a batch of site photos, maps each to its line in the progress claim, assigns a completion percentage, and drafts the report with the photos attached — for the site manager to adjust the calls and sign off.

Open the live demo

theater/demos/construction_photo-to-report.html · sandbox · read-only

Open

FIG. 1

The live demo, running on fabricated data. Open it to step through the full flow — every output is shown for a person to approve before anything happens.

How it would work

Reads the week's site photos against the project schedule, drafts a progress report with per-trade completion percentages and risk flags, and lays every call out for a site manager to correct and approve before it goes to the principal or the bank.

Input 01

The week's site photos + the schedule

A batch of phone photos from the end-of-week walkthrough — framing, roof, electrical rough-in, plumbing stack, plasterboard — and the project schedule or progress-claim template they map to, with last week's figures.

Agent 02

Tags, maps, drafts

Identifies the trade visible in each photo, maps it to a schedule line, estimates a completion percentage against last week, and drafts the report — executive summary, per-trade progress table, and risk flags for stalled or un-started trades.

Output 03

A draft, with its working shown

A complete draft report — percentages, the change since last week, and every flagged stall — laid out for the site or project manager to correct and approve before it's submitted to the principal or the lender's quantity surveyor.

Where it works well

It writes the report every site visit, in full, and never quietly skips the trade nobody photographed cleanly.

Done by hand it is one to three hours per site per period — and the risk-flag write-up is the first thing dropped under deadline.
Best for a site or project manager reporting weekly or fortnightly: bank drawdowns, principal updates, head-contractor claims.
Across several active sites the recaptured hours go back into walking the job and chasing the stalled trade, not retyping percentages.

The slow, invisible cost of a progress report is the matching — pairing a blurry phone photo to a schedule line, recalling last week's figure, and writing a completion narrative for each trade, every week, across several live sites.

Where it works badly

It is confidently wrong about what a photo shows — and a clean-looking report hides a guessed percentage.

Weak where completion isn't visible — waterproofing under tiles, in-slab services, anything signed off by certificate rather than shown in a photo.
It estimates percentages it should be flagging; a stalled trade that looks the same week to week can read as "on track" unless the photo set is honest.
If your claims are milestone-certified (stage complete / inspection passed) rather than percentage-of-works, the photo read gives you less than the certificate already does.

The honest test

If you cannot point to the photo and the schedule line behind every percentage in this report, the tool has made your guess faster, not your claim safer.

A photo of a framed wall doesn't reveal whether the frame passed inspection, whether bracing is in, or whether the plumbing behind it is roughed in. The tool reads the surface and can draft "Framing 85%" off a shot that a builder would read as 60%. That is the trap.

What it doesn't do — and shouldn't

It drafts the report. A person owns the percentages and signs the claim.

WHAT IT DOES

Tags each photo to a trade and a schedule line

Shows last week's figure, this week's, and the change

Flags trades that stalled or never started

WHAT IT WON’T

Submit the progress claim or release a drawdown

Certify a stage complete or an inspection passed

Decide a completion percentage is contractually correct

A progress claim is a statutory payment claim — in Victoria under the Building and Construction Industry Security of Payment Act 2002, with equivalent Acts in the other states and the Building and Construction Industry (Security of Payment) Act 2021 in WA, and the Construction Contracts (Security of Payments) Act in the NT. An overstated percentage can mean a claim for work not done, and a lender's quantity surveyor signs against the report on a drawdown. The accountable person stays on the decision because the consequence — a disputed claim, a clawed-back drawdown — lands on the builder, not the tool.

What your data has to look like

Photos that actually show the work, tied to schedule lines that match how you claim.

Typical readiness

across orgs we see, before the first job

Photos that identify the trade and area

Needs shaping

The project schedule or claim template as structured lines

Usual weak point

Last period's completion figures

Usual weak point

A consistent capture routine

Needs shaping

Which claim basis applies — percentage or milestone

Usual weak point

The real first job

The weak point is almost always the photos — taken inconsistently, unlabelled, and never tied to schedule lines. Fixing how site photos are captured, named, and matched to the schedule is usually the real first job, larger and more valuable than the drafting layer on top. Once the capture routine is solid, every week's report after that is faster and defensible by default.

Right fit if…

You report progress weekly or fortnightly across one or more active sites

Your claims are percentage-of-works, mapped to schedule lines

Site photos are taken to a routine and can be tied to a location

You produce reports for a principal, a head contractor, or a lender's QS

Walk away if…

Your claims are milestone-certified — stage complete, inspection passed

Most completion is invisible in a photo (waterproofing, in-slab, services)

Site photos are unsorted, unlabelled, and captured ad hoc

You need a tool that certifies a stage or signs off the claim for you

Open questions

The worried-buyer questions, answered straight

It can draft a wrong percentage — a framed wall in a photo can read higher than a builder would call it — which is exactly why nothing is claimed on its say-so. It ties each percentage to the photo and the schedule line it used and flags the trades it’s unsure about, and a site manager corrects those before approving. A progress claim is a statutory payment claim (in Victoria, under the Building and Construction Industry Security of Payment Act 2002); the tool surfaces the numbers, the person stands behind them.

It works best when each photo can be tied to a trade and a location and the schedule exists as structured lines. If photos are unsorted and unlabelled, the draft is only as good as what the tool can infer, and it can’t tell a photo of last week’s framing from this week’s. Getting capture into a consistent, labelled routine tied to the schedule is usually the first piece of work — and the piece that pays off on every report after.

No. It removes the retyping and the photo-to-schedule matching — the hour or two of clerical work each period — so the manager spends their time on the judgement: is that wall really at 85%, why has plumbing stalled, what does the principal need to know. The completion calls and the claim are still theirs. The capacity it frees goes back into being on the job.

Current to the period you’re reporting. The report is only as honest as the photos behind it — last week’s shots reused this week will read as a stall that isn’t there, or hide one that is. And the schedule has to be the version you’re actually claiming against; if the program changed mid-job, point the tool at the current one. The honest test: can you say which site visit each photo came from?

Site photos, schedules and claim figures are commercially sensitive — they can reveal cost, margin and dispute exposure. Any deployment runs against your own systems and storage, not a shared pool, and we scope where the data sits and who can see it as part of the build. The demo here runs entirely on fabricated data — 47 Smith St, Craigieburn is not a real site.

No. It drafts a report and flags stalls, but it does not make a claim compliant. Security of payment is state-based — Victoria’s Building and Construction Industry Security of Payment Act 2002, with separate Acts in NSW, QLD, SA, TAS and the ACT, the Building and Construction Industry (Security of Payment) Act 2021 in WA, and the Construction Contracts (Security of Payments) Act in the NT — and timing, reference dates and claim form requirements differ and have recently changed. A person confirms the claim meets the rules of the jurisdiction the project sits in. The tool gets the draft most of the way; the accountable person closes the gap.

What it takes to build

4–6 weeks · 4 phases

Reused from template~70%

Bespoke to this skin~30%

stack · Claude vision · photo intake · report template · review UI

What it would cost

Fixed scope, fixed price, fixed dates.

Bite-sized first piece

One contained change, low risk

Pilot build

Most builds land here

Embedded support

Scale on proof

Considering this for your sites?

The honest place to start is a bite-sized first piece — one contained change, low risk. Tell us where it hurts; we'll play it back, scope it, and show you what's possible.

Book a call How we work