Written for superintendents, snagging inspectors, clerks of works and anyone whose deliverable is a defect report. No fluff, no gated PDFs.
Your last inspection before closing. What to bring, what to test room by room, the code sections behind the checks, and how to leave with a signed list the builder has to act on.
A back charge is a cost deducted from a subcontractor's payment for defects or damage it caused. When it is justified, the steps that make it hold up, and the UK and Australian payment rules that apply.
QA sets up the system that should get the work right; QC checks that it did. What each looks like on a construction project, who does it, and how the punch list fits in.
Move-out inspection, deposit deadline, make-ready list, move-in walk. How property managers turn a unit so the old deposit is settled fairly and the next one is protected.
An office fit-out is snagged against its own specification at practical completion. Cat A or Cat B, who walks it, what to test, and how to fix items around a tenant who has already moved in.
Everything between the end of physical work and final payment: the punch list, the documents, the certificates, the training and the final account. A checklist, who owns each part, and how to stop it dragging.
The formal record that work does not meet a requirement, open until the fix is agreed and verified. When an NCR is needed instead of a punch list item, what goes in it, and the four dispositions.
The contractor compiles it and fixes it, the architect checks it and certifies, the owner accepts and pays. What the main contract forms actually say, and where the arguments start.
Every guest room checked against the approved mock-up and the brand standard before it is sold. Who walks the rooms, what to test, and how to keep two hundred rooms under control.
A hold point stops the work until someone signs it off; a witness point only needs notice. How inspection and test plans use them, and why they keep defects off the final punch list.
Practical and substantial completion are the same milestone under different names. What each contract form calls the three stages, what changes at handover, and where the punch list fits.
The developer fixes snags for the first two years; the warranty covers mainly structure after that. What to send to customer care, when, and where to go if the snags stay open.
The time after handover when the contractor must come back and fix defects. How long it lasts under each contract, who does what, and how to keep the list so nothing is lost when it ends.
Every template shown, with what it is for and who uses it. Print any of them, or download the file and walk it on your phone with Pass, Fail and N/A.
Ranked for one inspector and one report, on what matters on site. We make one of them; it gets the same scrutiny as the rest.
The whole walk written out, in the order you move through the house, with the trade on every line. Print it, or walk it on your phone.
Forty defects, grouped by the trade that has to fix them. For each: what it looks like, what usually causes it, how serious it is and what to put on the report. Photographs where a description is not enough.
The report is the deliverable. This is the whole document, section by section: what goes on the cover, how an item is written so it can be priced, what makes a photograph evidence, and how a report is signed off and closed without a second argument.
Most new-build snagging inspections cost between £249 and £475 in 2026, and the range hides more than it shows. Here is what the price includes, what pushes it up, when it is worth paying and what the money actually buys.
The most common wet-room defect and the most commonly misreported one. The sealant is almost never the problem; it is the first thing to give up when something underneath it moves.
The crack every new home gets and every buyer photographs. Most are the building drying out; a few are the ground moving. The difference is six checks and a crack gauge, not a guess.
The white powder on the brickwork of almost every new house. Nine times out of ten it is the building drying out and the report says so in one line. The tenth time it is pointing at a leak.
A hairline down the corner of a tiled shower, a crack where the floor tiles meet the wall. It is not bad grout. It is grout in a place that should never have been grouted.
A fire-rated wall with one unsealed cable hole in it is not a fire-rated wall. This is where to look, what missing fire stopping looks like above a ceiling, and how to write it up so it is closed with a tested product and a label rather than a can of foam.
A ceiling stain is a message from the room above, written in a language most reports do not read. The shape, the colour, the edge and the position narrow the source to two or three candidates before a single tile is lifted.
The one defect where the inspector's first job is not to inspect. Assume it is live, keep your hands off, photograph from a distance, and write an item that gets a circuit isolated today and a certificate issued before anyone moves in.
A defect photograph has one job: to let someone who was not there see what you saw, where you saw it, and how big it was. Most fail at the second and third. Eight habits fix that, and none of them needs a better camera.
Who writes it, what belongs on it, when it happens in the schedule, and why most of them fail at the closeout stage rather than the inspection stage.
They describe the same document. But the surrounding vocabulary, substantial completion vs practical completion, retention vs retainage, genuinely differs, and mixing them up costs you.
A field-by-field breakdown you can copy into a spreadsheet today, including the four columns most free templates leave out, which are the ones that cause disputes.
A walkable order of operations, structure, envelope, MEP, finishes, safety, documents, plus the items inspectors most often forget until the client finds them.
The useful version of this technology is narrower and more boring than the marketing suggests, and considerably more valuable once you understand exactly where the line is.
The report is the deliverable, not the inspection. Structure, evidence and the specific language habits that get items fixed on the first attempt instead of the third.
Four categories of tool, the features that matter on site versus the ones that demo well, and the seven questions to ask before you commit a team to anything.
The same defects appear on nearly every handover inspection. Knowing the list in advance turns a four-hour walk into a two-hour one, and stops you missing the boring ones.
Free to download. Open the sample inspection or analyse your first defect in under a minute. No account, no setup.