# Drill program monitoring

> Rigs, contractors and daily shift reports — then ask for meters by rig and a progress report.

Source: https://geodb.io/guide/topic/drill_program_monitoring/ · Category: Running your program
Once the drills turn, the questions never stop: how many meters this
week? which rig is behind? what did we burn in bits and mud? Drill
program monitoring answers them from **daily shift reports** — one small
record per drill per shift — instead of from a spreadsheet someone
maintains at 9pm.

## Setting up the program

A few minutes on the drilling pages before the first shift:

- **Drills and contractors** — register each rig and the company running
  it. Contractor staff can be given **contractor-scoped accounts**: they
  see their own rigs and their own shift reports, and nothing else of
  your project.
- **Activity types** — what a shift's hours get logged against
  (drilling, moving, standby, repairs…). Sensible defaults exist; add
  your program's own.
- **Consumables** — bits, rods, mud, additives — with costs if you want
  burn tracked in dollars as well as units.

You'll find all of it under the drilling pages and the drilling group in
project settings.

## The daily rhythm: shift reports

Each shift files one **daily shift report (DSR)**: date, drill, hole,
start and end depths, hours by activity, consumables used. Three ways
they arrive:

- **Typed at the rig or the office** — the DSR form takes a minute.
- **From the field app** — contractors file from the rig on a phone,
  offline-safe, synced when there's signal.
<!-- guide-clip:dsr-field-entry -->
- **From a photo of the paper form** — many contractors still hand over
  carbon-copy shift dockets. Snap a photo, hand it to Petra, and she
  reads it into a *draft* report with the activity rows filled in — you
  review and save. A draft never becomes the record without your eyes on
  it.

## Asking for the story: summaries and reports

With DSRs flowing, the program's story is a question away. Ask Petra
things like *"meters by rig this week"*, *"what did shift standby cost
us in March"*, or *"summarise drilling progress for the monthly report"*
— she reads the shift reports and answers with the numbers, and can
compose a period summary — meters by rig and day, activity breakdown,
consumable burn — into a progress report document you can keep or share.
The drilling pages remain the manual surface: every report and rig list
is there to browse whenever you'd rather look than ask.

One honest boundary: shift reports are created rig-side, by people or
from their paperwork. There's no shortcut that turns a drilling
*contract* into shift reports — a contract sets up the contractor and
rigs; the shifts still have to happen.