Over the years, we’ve used just about anything we can find on our job sites to write notes on. We’ve written “to do” lists, gofer lists and crew instructions on everything from 2×4 offcuts to plywood scraps, hunks of cardboard and candy wrappers. Unwittingly, tidy laborers have sometimes tossed out lists, thinking they were trash.
Now we use a job-site communication center on each job. It’s a homemade dry-erase board screwed to a wall. We bought a couple of 4×8 sheets of white hardboard, and we cut them into 4×4 and 2×4 bulletin boards. Each 4×8 sheet cost about $9, compared with $30 for a fancy 2×3 board with an aluminum frame and a pen shelf. We keep the dry-erase pens from disappearing by tying them to the bulletin boards.
Everyone on the crew uses the boards to make material lists, add punch-list items, note construction details and highlight important phone numbers. The boards are also a good place to leave notes to crews and subcontractors when we miss them on our site visits.
Mike Guertin, East Greenwich, RI
