What is a PLOD?

What a PLOD records

A complete PLOD covers, at minimum:

• ✓ Shift and crew: date, day or night shift, driller, offsider or helper, rig ID.
• ✓ Meters: depth at start and end of shift, meters advanced per hole, core runs and recovery for diamond drilling.
• ✓ Time breakdown: drilling, moves, surveys, cementing, waiting on client, weather standby, breakdowns (NPT).
• ✓ Consumables: bits, reamers, rods, additives, fuel, with the hole they were charged to.
• ✓ Comments and sign-off: what went wrong, what the client rep approved.

Why the PLOD matters

Contractors bill from it: meters at the contracted rate, standby hours, consumables passed through. Clients audit from it: every invoice line traces back to a shift record. When the PLOD is late, illegible, or inconsistent, invoicing slows, disputes grow, and month-end takes days longer than it should. NPT analysis, bit life, and rig utilization all come from the same document.

PLOD vs DSR vs DDR

Different regions, same idea. Australia and much of contract drilling says PLOD. Canada and the US often say DSR (daily shift report) or DDR (daily drilling report). Oil and gas uses the IADC daily drilling report. The contents are near-identical: shift time breakdown, meters or footage, consumables, comments, sign-off.

Where paper and Excel PLODs break

Carbon-copy books get wet, lost, and retyped with errors. Excel PLODs fork into per-rig versions that no longer add up. Both arrive at the office days after the shift, so billing runs a week behind the rig and disputes are settled from memory. The data that should drive bit cost per meter and NPT analysis sits in a filing box.

Digital PLODs

A digital PLOD is captured on a tablet at the rig during the shift, offline if there is no signal, and syncs when coverage returns. Validation happens at entry (depths must add up, times must fill the shift), the client sees a consistent format, and the same record drives invoicing, bit life, and NPT reporting with nothing retyped.