New Build Warranty and Inspection Stage Questions Checklist

Ask which party registers the project with a provider, whether that is you, a builder or a designer, and record who holds the relationship.

The party holding the relationship is usually the only one the provider will speak to, which matters at every later stage.

Ask at what point in a project registration has to happen, and what would be affected if it were left until work had already started.

Providers commonly expect to be involved before certain work is done, and discovering that afterwards is expensive.

Ask your lender and your adviser why a warranty is required for your project and what they expect it to cover, and record both answers.

The requirement usually comes from somewhere specific, and knowing the source tells you what actually has to be satisfied.

Ask what information a provider needs before they will accept a registration, and how long that acceptance normally takes to come through.

This sits on the critical path more often than owners expect, and the list is easy to ask for in advance.

Ask whether a provider treats a self-managed project differently from one run by a contractor, and what that difference involves in practice.

Arrangements differ considerably here, and the difference is best established before a route is chosen.

Record what you were told by whom and on what date, since a provider's arrangements are best captured in writing rather than in recollection.

Conversations about registration happen early and are relied on much later, usually by somebody who was not present.

Ask which stages of the work a provider expects to attend, and ask for that list in writing rather than as a general description.

A written list can be given to everyone working on the project; a description in a phone call cannot.

Ask how much notice each visit requires and who is responsible for giving it, and record both answers against each stage.

Notice requirements are the mechanism by which a third party's calendar binds yours, and they are rarely stated up front.

Ask what happens if a stage is reached and covered before a visit takes place, and record the answer before it becomes relevant.

This is the situation that causes real difficulty, and the answer is far easier to hear in advance than in the middle of it.

What a provider does about a missed stage is theirs alone to decide. Confirm it with them rather than predicting it from anybody else's experience.

Ask who books each visit and how you would know it had been booked, since an assumed responsibility is an unmet one.

Booking sits with different parties on different projects, and the gap is usually discovered at the stage itself.

Ask whether work in an area pauses while a visit is awaited, and how that is expected to be managed with whoever is running the site.

This is where a provider's regime meets the daily reality of a site, and it deserves to be discussed by everyone at once.

Make sure whoever is running the site has the same list of stages and notice periods that you do, rather than assuming they were sent it.

Two parties working from different versions of this list is the most common way a stage is missed.

Ask for the full list of documents a provider expects to receive across the project, and when each of them is due.

Almost everything on this list is easier to produce at the time than to reconstruct at the end.

Ask whether any part of the work has to be photographed or otherwise evidenced before it is covered, and who is responsible for doing it.

Evidence of covered work cannot be produced afterwards, which makes this the item worth asking about first.

Ask what design information a provider expects to review, at what stage, and whether any of it has to be produced by a particular kind of professional.

This occasionally shapes who you appoint, which is why it belongs before appointments are made rather than after.

Ask whether any specialist report is expected, such as about the ground, and who they expect to have produced it.

Providers sometimes expect reliance arrangements that are much easier to set up while a specialist is still engaged.

Ask who holds the master set of everything submitted, and arrange to receive copies rather than relying on another party's records.

Records held by a builder or a designer do not reliably reach the owner at the end of a project.

Start collecting these documents from the beginning of the project rather than assembling them at the end, and keep them in one place.

A folder built as you go is complete; one assembled at the end is missing whatever was lost in the middle.

Ask how visits are scheduled, what happens at busy periods, and whether a visit can be brought forward if work moves faster than expected.

Programmes move in both directions, and the ability to move a visit earlier is worth knowing about.

Ask who is responsible for coordinating the provider's visits with the construction programme, and make sure one named party holds it.

Coordination assumed by everyone and held by nobody is precisely how stage visits get missed.

Ask what obligations sit with you personally as the registered party, and what happens if one of them is not met.

Owners often discover an obligation of their own only when it has already been missed.

Ask how a change to the design during construction has to be notified to the provider, and by whom.

Changes happen on every project, and the notification route is rarely established until one has already occurred.

Ask what happens if work is carried out in a different order from the one assumed, since that affects when stages are reached.

Sequence changes are ordinary and the effect on a stage regime is not obvious, which makes it worth asking.

Keep your own record of when each stage is approaching, rather than relying on being told by whoever is running the site.

The owner is the party with the strongest interest in a visit happening, which makes them the right party to track it.

Ask what a provider understands their cover not to extend to, and record the answers in the provider's own words rather than in a summary.

Summaries drift, and the wording is what matters if the question ever becomes live.

Interpreting what any policy covers is a legal matter. Put the documents to a suitably qualified adviser rather than relying on a conversation.

Ask how work carried out by you or by people you appoint directly is treated, and whether that differs from work by a main contractor.

Self-managed projects frequently mix the two, and the distinction matters to a provider more than to an owner.

Ask how any existing structure being retained or extended is treated, since cover arrangements commonly differ between new and existing work.

Owners extending or rebuilding around something existing often assume a single arrangement covers both.

Ask whether a provider has expectations about the kinds of product or arrangement used, and where those expectations are written down.

Finding out that something is not accepted after it has been installed is the outcome this question avoids.

Whether a provider accepts a particular product or arrangement is for that provider to state in writing. Nothing here indicates what any of them expects.

Ask how a claim would be made, who would assess it, and what evidence you would need to have kept.

The evidence a claim depends on is gathered during construction, which is why the question belongs at the start.

Ask how the cover changes over time after completion, and what the difference means for what you should be doing.

The obligations on an owner change after handover, and almost nobody explains this unless asked.

Ask who is told when a visit raises a point, in what form, and how long it takes to reach you.

Owners commonly hear about these indirectly and late, which is the worst way to hear about anything.

Ask whether you receive a copy of whatever is produced after each visit, and arrange it explicitly rather than assuming it.

Reports produced for a builder are not automatically shared with an owner unless somebody asked.

Ask what has to happen for a point to be treated as resolved, and who confirms that it has been.

Resolution is a defined act rather than an impression, and knowing what it looks like keeps things from drifting.

Ask whether work continues in other parts of the building while a point raised at a visit is being resolved, and which party makes that decision.

This has a considerable effect on a programme and is rarely discussed until it is already happening.

Keep your own record of every point raised and how it was resolved, with dates, rather than relying on somebody else's file.

Your own record is the one you can still find later, and it is written from your point of view.

Ask what happens if the provider and your builder or designer disagree, and what part you would be expected to play.

Owners end up in the middle of these, and it is far better to know the shape of it in advance.

Ask exactly what document you receive at completion, in what form, and how long it takes to arrive after the work finishes.

Owners frequently assume this arrives automatically on the last day, and the gap causes real difficulty at a sale.

Ask whether the arrangement transfers to a future owner and what, if anything, has to be done for it to do so.

A future purchaser's adviser will ask this immediately, and the answer belongs in your records now.

Whether any arrangement transfers with a property is a legal matter. Put the question to the provider and to a suitably qualified adviser.

Keep the document with the ownership papers rather than in a project file, since project files are discarded when a project ends.

Papers kept with ownership documents tend to reach the next household, and site files do not.

Record how the provider is contacted and under what reference, and keep that with the document rather than in an inbox.

Contact details go stale inside a project inbox and are needed years later by somebody who was never on the project.

Ask whether anything is expected of you as the owner to keep the arrangement in place, and write that down plainly.

Ongoing obligations on an owner are commonly written once, in a document nobody rereads, and quietly missed.

Make sure whoever else lives in or manages the property knows the arrangement exists and where the papers are kept.

A document nobody in the household can find behaves exactly like a document that does not exist.