Daily huddle: a construction perspective

[edit] Introduction

The Daily Huddle is a regular event on construction sites. They are team meetings involving key personnel which are used to explain the planning of the day’s work and the job’s significance to the overall success of the scheme.

This article gives typical content for the agenda of a Daily Huddle on a construction site and covers potential health & safety, environmental and technical issues.

Furthermore, it considers that the agenda can be presented electronically in an APP to aid communication and record keeping.

[edit] Daily Huddle and agenda

The Daily Huddle is a short, stand-up briefing that a construction team holds at the beginning of the works each day to explain and coordinate its activities for that day. This is with a focus on health, safety and environmental matters arising as well as technical issues.

It will also look at the context of progress against the programme and can be a forum for flagging-up problems. To this end, a Daily Huddle should invite communication within the team. Remote access can be set-up in site offices where expertise from people not on site is needed.

The meeting typically lasts up to 15 minutes. There can be Daily Huddles for more than one team sitting under an overarching one, depending on the complexity of the site.

[edit] Daily Huddle format

This framework for a Daily Huddle is given here in a format that could be presented electronically using an APP, e.g. enabling the use of a handheld device on site which would allow electronic communication and for records of the Daily Huddle to be easily kept.

It is recognised that a ‘Wipe board’ can be used instead, as is common practice currently.

Table 1 – Daily Huddle format – Device screen menu for an APP

The recommended content for each screen follows.

[edit] Conclusion

The Daily Huddle is the important first briefing meeting of the day that has the purpose of ensuring the construction team starts work safely and observes environmental and technical standards. It is the foundation to ensuring that the job and scheme proceeds in the same safe and accurate way.

A portfolio of topics and questions for a Daily Huddle is provided in this article. This agenda is scale-able, from small to very large projects, as only items relevant to the job on a given day need to be covered. Focusing the agenda in this way will also assist in staying within the 15 minutes target time for the Daily Huddle.

It is recommended that this content can be presented in a format for use electronically as an APP, e.g. on handheld device, for ease of communication by the team and to facilitate record keeping.

Original article written by Kevin Rogers, reviewed by Giorgio Mannelli on behalf of the CQI Construction Special Interest Group (ConSIG), and accepted for publication by the Knowledge Working Group on 23/11/2024