Meeting minutes record a project meeting, most often the weekly owner–architect–contractor (OAC) meeting or the GC’s subcontractor coordination meeting. Good minutes list attendance, then each topic with a number, the decision, the owner and the due date. Open items from the previous meeting come first, so nothing drops off the list.
Why it matters
Minutes are how a decision made in a room becomes a commitment someone can be held to. They are also part of the project record: when a delay or change is disputed, the minutes show when an issue was raised, who was told and what was agreed.
Worked example
Illustrative, on Riverside Medical Center (sample data): topic 11.2, “Corridor fire damper detail”, is carried from meeting 11 into meeting 12 because RFI-212 is still open. The minutes record “Architect to issue detail; affects ceiling close-in”, with the architect as owner. When the answer comes, the topic is closed and the change it caused is tracked as a change event, not in the minutes.
Common mistakes
- Writing the conversation instead of the decision.
- Topics with no owner or due date (“team to review”).
- Dropping last week’s open items instead of carrying them forward.
- Retelling an RFI or submittal in the minutes instead of referencing its number.
How os.construction handles it
The Meetings tool holds the agenda, attendance (Present, Absent, Conference or For Distribution Only) and minutes per topic. Topics can link to an RFI, submittal, punch item or observation, Create task turns a topic into a tracked task, and Create Follow-up Meeting carries open topics into the next meeting. The app records who the minutes went to but doesn’t email them. See Meetings.
