Bad data entry processes create bad records

10 Jul 2026 · 1 min

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In this segment of the YouTube video, the speaker (William Doyle MRICS) recounts the early days of building Rail Diary and his conversation with Paul, the company's CTO who previously ran the digital agency Gather Digital. He explains that the most effective way to capture field data is not by simply porting spreadsheet tables onto tablets, but by providing a structured workflow that guides users. The speaker emphasizes that on‑site personnel—illustrated by the image of a worker in orange working in the rain—need an intuitive, workflow‑driven interface to record data accurately, rather than being forced to interpret and fill out raw tables.

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So when I started Rail Diary as it was, and I met Paul, who's our CTO and ran a digital agency called Gather Digital at the time, the first thing I learned was the best way to enter data is not in a table. That's not how you enter data. That's how you interpret it or read it. But when you're asking someone to capture data on site, it's not just about going, take this fancy spreadsheet that QS has built and put it on an iPad or put it on a tablet. It's about giving it structured workflow and making it easy for that person in orange in the pouring rain to capture that data correctly.