Weekly project-risk digest

The job

The president at a US general contractor doing about $5–10M a year — often the owner who also estimates, codes a bill, and answers the superintendent at 6 p.m. There is no operations director whose only job is the Monday portfolio review. Jobs run in parallel. If the review is late, they hear about the problem from the project owner, the bonding agent, or a sub who stopped showing up.

This job is use an agent, not build a model. The president already has a desk: email, the dailies the supers already write, a job-cost spreadsheet (Excel, or whatever they already keep), meeting minutes (Word or email), and last month’s pay app. The agent sits in the read-and-draft-exceptions step only. It does not walk the site. It does not send Notice of a Claim. It does not become the Monday meeting.

Without an agent the work is still the same: open each job’s folder, skim the week’s paper, try to remember which job went quiet, call or walk the ones that smell wrong.

What the brief is. A one-page exceptions list across the active jobs — not a novel, not a dashboard, not a “portfolio health score.” Three questions, every Monday:

• What moved — cost or contract that changed this week: a variance that was not on last Friday’s sheet, new bills posted, an executed change order, a construction change directive that is still not a change order.
• What’s late — work or a milestone that slipped against the schedule you already issued or received, with a citation to the daily, the minutes, or a schedule line. Not against a model’s memory of how long drywall “usually” takes.
• What nobody mentioned — a job on your roster that produced no daily, no minutes, and no cost movement; or a fact that appears in one file and is silent in the others (steel sitting in a daily, absent from the OAC minutes). Silence is the signal. “On track” is not a finding if nobody wrote anything.

AIA does not publish “the owner weekly risk digest.” What AIA does publish is the contract and payment machinery the digest has to support, a parallel field report for the design side, and practice notes on minutes. The shop’s form is a one-pager they already would have written by hand.

Dailies. A construction daily is a contemporaneous, dated, jobsite-level record — manpower, weather, work in place, delays, visitors, a signature by the person who was there. The sister job is how the superintendent drafts that daily. This job reads the week’s signed dailies; it does not write them. AIA does not publish a GC daily form. The architect’s counterpart is G711–2018, Architect’s Field Report: present at site, observations (including known deviations from the Contract Documents and from the contractor’s most recent construction schedule), attachments, and a signature by the person who walked the site. Official AIA: G711 is the architect’s tool (B101 § 3.6.2.1 — generally familiar, not exhaustive quantity check). If the two files disagree six months later, the one written that afternoon wins. A week of missing GC dailies is itself an exception — list the job as silent; do not let a model fill the gap from last month.

Minutes. Official AIA does not publish a GC meeting-minutes form. Yu-Ngok Lo, AIA, writing on AIA’s Construction Contract Administration community: weekly owner–architect–contractor (OAC) minutes are essential administratively and legally because attendees leave with different memories; they record what was decided, what needs follow-up, and who holds the ball. Responsibility sits with whoever the contract names — usually the contractor or construction manager, sometimes the architect. Format varies. The items Lo lists as basic: project name and address, preparer, meeting number / time / date, attendees and who they represent, total contract calendar days elapsed, anticipated date of Substantial Completion. Number items (meeting number + item); name the responsible party and a due date; mark information-only as “Info.” Give attendees a chance to review the draft — Lo’s practice note is at least 48 hours — before the minutes are official. Disputed wording is discussed before issue. Minutes are often later read by arbitrators and mediators. That is why this job quotes the issued minutes, not a model’s paraphrase of a meeting nobody recorded. CSI MasterFormat is the North American shared language for organizing construction work results; Division 01 is general requirements (procedures). Project meeting rules are commonly specified as 01 31 19 – Project Meetings (progress meetings often 01 31 19.23). MasterFormat is numbering language, not a minutes form. Your contract / Division 01 wins.

What moved (cost and contract). AIA does not publish a weekly job-cost report. The desk is the spreadsheet they already keep — job, budget or estimate, committed, billed, cost to date, variance — plus the payment and change instruments the files already contain.

• Pay applications. Official AIA: payment does not move because work happened; it moves when work is documented and certified. G702–1992 (Application and Certificate for Payment) and G703 (Continuation Sheet) are the industry standard for monthly progress releases; they tie to A101 and flow down to A401. G702 summarizes original contract sum, change orders, work completed and stored to date, retainage, prior payments, and current amount due. G703 breaks the contract sum into portions of the Work per the schedule of values. A digest line that says “we billed 60%” must point at a G702/G703 (or your posted job-cost row), not at a model percentage.
• Change orders. Official AIA (Verrastro & Baum, quoting A201–2017): a Change Order is “a written instrument prepared by the Architect and signed by the Owner, Contractor, and Architect” stating agreement on (1) the change in the Work, (2) the adjustment, if any, in the Contract Sum, and (3) the adjustment, if any, in the Contract Time. The form is G701–2017. Official G701 instructions: the cost block is original Contract Sum or GMP, net change by previously authorized Change Orders (not Construction Change Directives unless those were later agreed and recorded as a Change Order), sum prior to this CO, this increase or decrease, and the new sum; the time block is days and the date of Substantial Completion. Official AIA on CCD vs change order: G714 directs the contractor to proceed before cost or time is agreed (owner and architect sign; contractor proceeds); G701 is the signed agreement. AIA: a CCD should be the exception, not the routine; informal verbal / meeting / email direction is a constructive-change pattern and a dispute later. A minutes item that says “owner asked to add the patio” is not an executed G701. Do not let a model promote it.

What’s late (schedule). Official AIA summary of A201–2017 § 3.10.1: the Contractor’s schedule contains detail appropriate to the Project, including (1) the date of commencement, interim milestone dates, and the date of Substantial Completion; (2) an apportionment of the Work by trade or building system; and (3) the time required for completion of each portion of the Work. Official AIA delay write-up: that schedule is to show sequence and be revised as project conditions change; a maintained schedule is the planned-vs-actual record. A201 § 8.3.1: adverse weather documented under § 15.1.6.2 may entitle an extension of Contract Time. Official AIA delay guidance: excusable delays (weather, unforeseen site conditions) may allow time; missing a notice deadline can waive time or money; document impacts, communications, and decisions as delays unfold. Claims arising before the end of the corrections period are subject to a 21-day notice period and an initial decision. Official A201–2017 summary on notice: notices may go by electronic means, but Notice of Claims may not — certified or registered mail, or courier with proof of delivery, to the designated representative. An agent-drafted “they are late” paragraph is not that notice, and it is not a time extension.

Weather, if the files claim it. If a daily or the minutes say weather stopped work, look up the job’s city or ZIP on the National Weather Service. Do not let the model invent the high. NWS NOWData is preliminary and unofficial; NCEI certification is what the Department of Commerce will authenticate for a court. Same rule as the daily-report job. A digest line that says “abnormal weather delayed the critical path” is not A201 substantiation.

Why a $5–10M GC still does this. The role page already says the president’s real job is noticing the problem early: the job drifting over budget, the PM going quiet, the backlog thinning. On this shop that is four or eight jobs and one person who will not read forty pages of dailies on Sunday. A late cost surprise is a false WIP number and a bonding conversation. A quiet job is often the one that later needs a claim file you do not have. There is no PMO. There is a laptop and a Monday. That is why the draft exceptions brief is the job.

What this job is not. It is not Notice of a Claim. It is not the architect’s G711. It is not an executed G701. It is not the superintendent’s daily (that is a different seat). It is not a new dashboard you do not already pay for. It is not a walk.

Use

This is a use workflow. You do not train a model. You do not ask it to invent a late milestone, a change-order number, or a job that produced no files. You give it this week’s paper and your job roster, you get a one-page draft, you review.

1. Write the job roster first. Active jobs only — job name, job number, PM or super if you have one, contract sum, current Substantial Completion date as you last agreed it. Excel is fine. If the roster is not in the upload, the model cannot flag the job that sent nothing. That is the whole point of “what nobody mentioned.”
2. Pull this week’s signed dailies. Prefer the PDF or email the superintendent actually sent. A Sunday back-fill is a diary, not a contemporaneous log — still feed it, and mark it as late. Missing days are a line on the brief, not a hole for the model to invent.
3. Pull the cost report you already keep. Job-cost vs budget / estimate, commitments, billed to date, variance. Export or open the sheet as of Friday (or whenever you close the week). If a pay app went out, include that G702/G703. If a change order was executed, include the signed G701 (and G714 if a CCD is still open). Do not invent a WIP format in the prompt.
4. Pull the minutes you already have. OAC or internal, for each job that met. Issued minutes, not your memory of the meeting. If a job did not meet, that is a silence line.
5. Optional, only if you already have them: the contractor’s current schedule (A201 § 3.10 shape), last week’s digest you actually used, and an NWS line for any day a daily claims weather stopped work.
6. Feed the agent only those files. Roster + this week’s dailies + cost sheet + minutes + (optional) schedule / G702 / G701 / NWS + your one-page template. Prompt shape: draft one page of exceptions only; every line names the job number from the roster and quotes or cites the uploaded file (daily date, minutes item number, cost-row label, G701 number); list jobs on the roster that produced no daily, no minutes, and no cost movement as silent — no files this week, not “on track”; do not invent a CO number, a milestone date, a percent complete, or a critical-path claim; do not promote a minutes discussion or an RFI to an executed change order; leave a line blank if the files do not support it; do not write Notice of a Claim; do not say the owner, architect, lender, or a sub has been notified.
7. Human edit before anyone else sees it. Open the cited daily, minutes item, and cost row. Strike invented dates and fluent “CO-12” citations that are not on your G701 log. Check G702 current payment against G703 if a pay-app line appears. Confirm a “late” call against the uploaded schedule, not the model’s trade-duration folklore. Call or walk the silent jobs. The agent cannot see a job that wrote nothing.
8. Own the call. Name, date. The brief is not the week’s record until a person who owns the company accepts it. Decide who you phone, which job you drive to, and which line is noise.
9. Act the way you already do. Monday calls, a walk, an email to your PM — from you. Do not stand up a new portfolio-risk vendor for this job. Do not forward the raw draft to the project owner, the architect, the lender, or the bonding agent.

Expected shape of the gain: less Sunday night spent opening eight folders to find the one job that went quiet. That is not “the model ran the company.” There is no published, independent hours-saved or accuracy number for a $5–10M GC weekly risk digest that this page will invent. Time two of your Mondays (draft + your edit vs reading cold) before you change anything you pay for.

Build

A general-purpose model that can read PDFs and spreadsheets can draft an exceptions page from a job roster plus a week’s dailies, cost export, and minutes. Contract time, executed changes, and “is this a claim?” need a person. Do not treat the draft as notice, as a G701, or as a walk.

A workable v1: a prompt template that returns one page — roster coverage (files in / silent), then a short table per exception: job #, type (moved / late / silent / conflict), the fact in one line, source (file + date or minutes item), open question — plus a “do not send” footer. Keep the transcript with that week’s folder. Require “not in the uploaded files” instead of inventing a late item or a CO number.

Do not build a custom classifier this quarter. Do not fine-tune. Do not stand up a data warehouse. This week’s files and your roster are the only corpus that matters.

Deploy

1. Pick last week’s real paper you still stand behind — three to five active jobs, including one that was actually quiet (no daily, or no minutes, or both) and one that had a real cost or schedule exception you already acted on.
2. Run the agent on the same roster + that week’s dailies + cost export + minutes (+ schedule / G702 / G701 if you had them). Time upload, draft, and your edit.
3. Diff the draft against the Monday you actually ran. Record invented late items, invented CO / pay-app numbers, jobs marked “on track” that had no files, silent jobs it skipped, and minutes items it promoted to executed changes.
4. Decide using a rule set in advance: no brief leaves your laptop unreviewed; every “late” or “moved” line must cite an uploaded file; if the model invents a change-order number or calls the quiet job healthy, it is not ready.

Use your real jobs, not a vendor demo company. Keep the workflow only if the approved page is still something you would act on.

Manage

What “good” looks like

• A named human reviews every brief before anyone is called, walked, or emailed.
• The upload includes the job roster. Jobs with no files this week are listed as silent, not healthy.
• Every “moved” or “late” line cites a file you attached (daily date, minutes item, cost-row label, G701 / G702 number).
• Raw model text is never forwarded to the project owner, architect, lender, bonding agent, or a sub.
• Executed changes are G701s (or your signed equivalent). Minutes, RFIs, and “owner asked” are not change orders. Open G714s stay labeled as directives, not as new contract sums.
• Weather lines copy NWS (and the daily’s clock times), not a generated “severe weather” story.
• The brief is one page. If everything is an exception, the roster is wrong or the week is a claim week — write that yourself.
• If you already keep job cost or dailies in software you pay for, the agent drafts from an export of that. This page does not sell a new one.

Who owns the seat

The president / owner owns the Monday call. On a $5–10M GC that is one person and the laptop they already use. The PM can confirm a line; they do not own the portfolio. The superintendent owns the daily they signed, not the digest. An agent does not become “I reviewed the jobs this week.”

When to skip the agent

• You have one job and you already walk it. The homepage job is across all jobs. A walk beats a digest.
• You did not attach a roster, or this week’s files do not exist. Do not ask a model to remember the company.
• You are about to send Notice of a Claim. Official A201–2017 summary: Notice of Claims is not electronic. Use counsel and the contract. Format a chronology from the files if you want; do not let a model “send the claim.”
• A recordable incident, a stop-work, an OSHA visit, or a life-safety issue. Call. Walk. The digest can wait.
• You expected the model to find the problem nobody wrote down. It will miss that job, or invent a different one.
• Informal changes you already know are fights. AIA: convert them to G701 or G714; do not let a digest pretend they are settled.
• The Monday review is already a fifteen-minute habit and reading is not the bottleneck. Leave it.

How to stand it up this quarter

Use the model you already have access to. Drop in last week’s dailies, the cost export, the minutes, and the job roster, plus a one-page heading list (moved / late / silent). Edit, click every citation, call the silent job. Repeat next Monday on live paper. Keep the workflow only if the approved brief is still something you would act on. Do not buy a portfolio-risk or dashboard product to complete this job.

Citations

Tools are citations, not new brand pages. Do not invent vendor homepages. This page does not create a Procore, Autodesk, Sage, Foundation, Power BI, or other dashboard-vendor listing.

• AIA A201–2017 — keystone general conditions for the Conventional (A201) family. Contractor’s schedule § 3.10.1 (commencement, milestones, Substantial Completion, apportionment, durations). Time § 8.3; weather substantiation § 15.1.6.2; 21-day claim notice; Claim-notice delivery (not electronic). Payment Article 9. Changes Article 7. Contractor guide: AIA on project delays. Schedule contents and planned-vs-actual: managing construction delays.
• AIA G702 / G703 — how progress payment is applied and certified. Context: G702 and G703 for GCs. The digest may cite billed-to-date from these forms; it does not replace them.
• AIA G701–2017 — executed change order; agreement on Work, Contract Sum or GMP, and Contract Time. Instructions: prior authorized COs only (CCDs do not enter the net-change line until recorded as a CO). Definition and process: change-order fundamentals. CCD vs change order / G714: directive before agreement; exception, not routine; informal direction is a dispute pattern.
• AIA G711–2018 — architect’s field report: present at site, observations (including schedule deviations), photos, signature by the walker. Not the GC daily and not this digest. Useful as the shape owners already recognize.
• AIA documenting construction meeting minutes — Yu-Ngok Lo, AIA, on AIA’s CCA community. No AIA minutes form; contractor or CM usually writes; numbered items; ball-in-court; 48-hour review; later legal record. Author’s practice note, not a Contract Document.
• CSI MasterFormat — shared classification language. Division 01 holds project-wide procedures. Project meetings commonly specified as 01 31 19. Your Division 01 / contract wins.
• National Weather Service — official US weather (about). NOWData FAQ: not official for legal use. Formal weather-time claim: NCEI certified records.
• Excel, email, PDF, the dailies they already write — roster, cost sheet, receive, read. If they already have job-cost or daily-log software, the agent reads an export of that. No new vendor page on this site.

Watch-outs

• Invented late items and fake CO numbers. Models write fluent “steel is two weeks late (CO-14)” lines that are not on your schedule or your G701 log. Same failure mode as legal citation hallucination: Dahl, Magesh, Suzgun & Ho, Large Legal Fictions, 16 J. Legal Analysis 64 (2024) (arXiv:2401.01301, doi:10.1093/jla/laae003) — public LLMs on verifiable federal-case questions hallucinated often and could not reliably tell. Those percentages are legal-case questions, not digest accuracy; do not import them as a construction performance rate. Do import the habit: every date, dollar, and instrument number in the draft is unverified until you open the file. Blank is honest; a confident fake late item is not.
• The job nobody mentioned. A model summarizes what you attached. It will skip the empty folder, or worse, call it “on track” from last month’s leftover language. The roster is the control. If a job produced no daily, no minutes, and no cost movement, the brief says silent. Then you call or walk. The agent cannot replace that.
• Minutes promoted to contract. Official AIA: a Change Order is a signed agreement on Work, sum, and time (G701). A CCD (G714) is a directive before agreement. A minutes line, an RFI, or “owner asked in the trailer” is not either one. AIA’s own CCD write-up names informal direction as the constructive-change pattern that becomes a payment fight. Do not let the digest close it.
• Pay-app theater. Official AIA: finish G703, transfer summary to G702. A digest that “moves” a percent complete the continuation sheet does not support is a reject, not a WIP number. Photos attached to dailies are not quantities.
• Weather theater. Copy NWS. A201 wants data that weather was abnormal for the period, not reasonably anticipated, and that it hit scheduled work — plus timely notice. A model paragraph is not that data.
• Unsigned AI to the owner, the bank, or the surety. Fluent, late, and wrong is worse than a short human note. This brief is internal until you accept it. It is not G711, not G702, and not Notice of a Claim.
• Claim notice is not a chat. A201–2017: Notice of Claims is not electronic. Do not let an agent “send the claim” or start the 21-day clock in an email it drafted.
• One-job shops. If you have one job and you already walk it, skip the agent. Reading a digest of a job you stood on yesterday is theater.
• Do not replace the president. The agent drafts exceptions from files. The owner still owns the call, the walk, the claim decision, and the company.

Verdict

Yes — a $5–10M US GC should run this job this quarter if they already have more than one active job, the week’s dailies / cost sheet / minutes already exist, the bottleneck is reading them all before Monday, and a person will still review every line and walk the silent job. Use an agent to read this week’s files across the roster and draft a one-page exceptions brief (what moved, what’s late, what nobody mentioned); the president reviews it. Skip this quarter if you have one job and already walk it; if you expected the model to find what was never written, invent a late item into a claim, or replace a walk; if you were about to forward the raw draft off the laptop; or if you were about to buy a dashboard you do not already have. Do not publish this page as a vendor listing.