Snag list template

A snag with a dated photo on it gets fixed. A snag described in a sentence gets discussed, and then discussed again on site in three weeks with two people pointing at different walls.

That is most of what a snag list template has to get right. The rest is keeping the row count honest, so the list closes out before handover rather than after.

Four lines of header, then straight into the rows

The re-inspection date is the field most templates leave off and the one that changes behaviour on site. A list with a return date is a deadline. A list without one is a request that sits unopened until somebody asks about retention.

The column list stops at six

Severity ratings, cost codes and a free-text comments box all come back empty. Anything you cannot fill in one-handed, holding a torch, does not belong in the template.

Refs are assigned once and never reassigned. A per-trade schedule is an extract from the master, not a new list, so the decorator's copy reads 12, 19, 34 with the gaps left in. Gaps look untidy and cost nothing. Five different rows all called ref 3 cost a morning.

Word the row so nobody has to ring you

About a dozen words separate a row that gets fixed from a row that generates a phone call.

The right-hand column takes a few more seconds to dictate and removes an entire round trip. "Paint poor in hall" produces a phone call, a site visit and a disagreement about which wall. The long version produces a decorator.

Say what finished looks like when it is not obvious. "Re-seal in one run" is doing real work in that last row, because the alternative reading is a fresh bead squeezed over the old one.

The photo is dated because the argument is about timing

On handover snags the dispute is almost never whether the defect exists. It is when it appeared, and therefore who pays. A frame with a timestamp taken during the walk settles that before it starts. Damage recorded at the walk belongs to the contractor. Damage first raised six weeks after the keys went across is a conversation about occupation, and without a dated set from handover day you will lose it.

Get close enough that the defect is unmistakable, with something of known size in the frame so nobody can argue about scale. Then one wider shot from the door, so the trade coming back can find the spot without you there.

A filled list, so the shape is visible

Ref 6 will still be open at re-inspection, and everybody should know that on the day it is raised. Falls need a decision and a machine, not a fortnight and a sander. Call rows like that out separately on the front page, or one slow row makes the whole list look late.

Score the list, because retention is riding on it

A snag list is the evidence that supports releasing money, so it has to be scoreable by somebody who was not on the walk. Every row ends in one of three states: open, ready for re-inspection, closed. Trades set the middle one on their own rows. The last one is yours alone, and only from inside the room it refers to.

Re-photograph every row you close. The closing frame is what somebody asks for when the same snag reappears in month three, and a status field with nothing behind it will not answer them.

After a re-inspection, report how many rows came back open, split by trade, rather than how many closed. That is the number that tells you where the second walk goes.

Keep design queries off it

A socket that lands behind a fridge, a radiator that fouls a door swing: those are questions for the design team, not snags, and dropping them in at ref 34 guarantees they get missed. Pull them out and send them the same day.

The same skirting gap in twelve identical plots is twelve refs, one per plot. Write it once as a site-wide note and you have handed over a row the contractor can close by fixing a single plot, with nothing to measure it against at re-inspection.

Close the list on site, not in the office

Issue the per-trade schedules from the numbered master on the day of the walk, while the photos still have context. Set the re-inspection date before you leave the building.

On iPhone and iPad, Sitewise is built for the capture half of this. Each snag becomes a photo with a dictated note attached (the voice note transcribes on the phone) and a sketched arrow when the defect is hard to pick out, and every capture is stamped with a time and, when location is on, a GPS pin. On a Pro iPhone or Pro iPad with a LiDAR scanner, two taps in the camera give a dimension that is drawn on the photo and printed in the report, which is how the 4mm and the 400mm above get recorded rather than guessed at. A half-finished block has no signal, so capture works offline and syncs once the phone is back on Wi-Fi. The walk exports as a PDF or DOCX you can send from the car park. It does not issue work to subcontractors, track programme, hold retention or collect signatures, and it does not run on Android or in a browser.

If the term is new to somebody on your team, what a punch list is covers where the list sits in close-out and who owns it. The punch list template is the same walk written in North American vocabulary.

The list you hand over is the document both sides will quote back at each other for months. Write every row so somebody who was not on the walk could score it, and most of those months never happen.