Construction Diary

The QAQC and Diary group on the DVD Cons tab covers the paperwork side of site work: expanding a work-item catalog into a day-by-day diary listing, pulling an acceptance-record catalog into a submission form, and opening the record templates shipped with the add-in.

The add-in does not write the diary text for you. What it does is spread each work item across exactly the days that item is running (minus its rest days), so you never have to type the same list day after day.

Commands in this group

Command	What it does
New Diary	Expands a work-item catalog into a day-by-day diary listing, written to sheet DM_NKTC
Pick Rest Days	Ticks days on a calendar and writes them as dd/MM/yyyy joined by + into the rest-days column
Export Category	Pulls up to 10 columns from a tracking table into a target sheet, starting at cell B6
Diary Template	Opens FormNKCT.xlsx — the daily construction diary form
Work Record Tpl	Opens FormNTCV.xlsx — the work acceptance record
Material Record Tpl	Opens FormNTVL.xlsx — the incoming material acceptance record

Producing a month of diary entries

1. Open the standard diary book — Templates ▸ Diary Template, then Save As under a project-specific name (the file that opens is the master copy in C:\DVDAddin\Template\).
2. Build the work-item catalog on a worksheet, one row per item, with columns for work content, construction start date, construction end date, acceptance date, and an empty column reserved for rest days.
3. Put the diary period's start and end dates in two cells on the same sheet (for example B2 and D2).
4. Declare the rest days: select the cells in the rest-days column → Diary Menu ▸ Pick Rest Days → tick days on the calendar (hold Ctrl for several) → Fill cells.
5. Click New Diary. In the top card fill Source data range, Start date cell and End date cell — each field has a ⤴ button for picking the reference directly on the worksheet.
6. In the Columns in the data range card fill Construction start column, Construction end column, Acceptance date column, Work content column and Rest-days column (optional).
7. Click Generate diary → sheet DM_NKTC appears with one block of work per day. Use it as the skeleton for the detailed entries in your diary book.
8. Prepare the submission: run Diary Menu ▸ Export Category to pull just the needed columns (work item, location, acceptance date, record number) into a form sheet, then print or export to PDF.

Example

The November superstructure catalog occupies A5:H60; the period start date is in B2 (1 Nov) and the end date in D2 (30 Nov). Inside the table, column B is the work content, C the start date, D the finish date, E the acceptance date and H the rest days.

Work content (B)	Start (C)	Finish (D)	Acceptance (E)	Rest days (H)
Concrete pour, level 5 columns	05/11/2021	09/11/2021	10/11/2021
Block work, level 3 perimeter	20/11/2021	30/11/2021	01/12/2021	23/11/2021+25/11/2021
Rebar fixing, level 5 beams and slab	11/11/2021	16/11/2021	17/11/2021

Enter exactly that and click Generate diary — sheet DM_NKTC walks through every day from 1 to 30 November and lists the items running on each of them:

• 7 Nov — Concrete pour, level 5 columns
• 12 Nov — Rebar fixing, level 5 beams and slab
• 23 Nov — no block work (declared as a rest day)
• 24 Nov — Block work, level 3 perimeter

All that is left is to add weather, labour, plant and the consultant's remarks for each day in the diary book you opened from Diary Template.

Tips and caveats

• Sheet DM_NKTC is overwritten on every run and Ctrl+Z will not bring it back — copy it elsewhere before re-running if you have edited it by hand.
• The rest-days column only accepts dd/MM/yyyy joined by +. Typing it is error-prone, so use Pick Rest Days. Values are stored as text so a single date is not converted by Regional Settings.
• In Pick Rest Days: a selection is required before running the command, the selection is capped at 500 cells, and ticking nothing then clicking Fill cells clears the selected cells.
• The columns you declare in New Diary are worksheet columns (C, D, E…), not positions inside the selection, and the range and its columns must be on the same sheet.
• For Export Category: output always starts at cell B6 (rows 1–5 are left for your form header), only rows with data in the base column are exported, and tick Skip hidden rows when the source table is filtered.
• New Diary and Export Category need an active account (Standard/PRO, trial included); the template commands and Pick Rest Days do not.

See also

• Acceptance Plan — builds the acceptance listing from the schedule for the same quality file.
• Test Plan (QA/QC) — TCVN test criteria for the materials in that file.
• Sheets → PDF — export the finished diary and catalog sheets into one PDF.
• Batch print — print many form pages driven by one cell.