Delivery and Material Record Checklist

Ask the contractor which materials will be delivered to the property and which arrive with the trades in their own vehicles, so you know what you are recording.

A great deal of material never appears as a formal delivery at all, which explains gaps that otherwise look like missing paperwork.

Ask who is expected to receive and sign for deliveries, and write down what should happen when nobody from the site team is present when a vehicle arrives.

Owners are routinely asked to sign for loads by default, and it is much better to have settled that question in advance.

Ask the contractor to state in writing who may receive goods on their behalf, and take any question about what signing commits you to to your own legal adviser.

Ask which items have to be ordered well ahead of when they are needed, and note the point at which each of those choices has to be settled.

Items ordered ahead are the ones where a late owner decision has the largest effect, and the connection is rarely spelled out.

Note where delivery vehicles are expected to stand and who arranged that, since this is often the part of a delivery that involves you and your neighbours.

Recording the arrangement means a complaint about a blocked access can be answered with what was actually agreed.

What is permitted on the street outside must be confirmed with the relevant local authority; do not assume an arrangement made on site covers it.

Set up a plain log with a line for each arrival showing the date, who delivered, what it appeared to be and who received it, and keep it in one place.

The log is only useful if it is filled in at the door; a reconstructed version loses exactly the details that were in dispute.

Ask whether anything for your project is being held somewhere other than the property, and record what you are told about where it is and how it is identified.

Arrangements for goods held away from the property raise questions for your own legal adviser and your insurer rather than for the site team alone.

Ask what a delivery document is taken to confirm before you sign it, and where you are unsure, say plainly that you are recording arrival only.

What a signature on a delivery document commits you to is a legal question; ask the supplier and take anything unclear to your own legal adviser.

Where you sign without having looked at what is inside the packaging, write that on the document as well as in your own log rather than leaving it unsaid.

Goods are almost never examined at the door, and a note made at the time is the only record that they were not.

Keep your own copy or a photograph of every delivery document at the moment it is signed, since the paper copy usually leaves with the driver or the site team.

Delivery paperwork disappears into a van or a site folder immediately, and it is the hardest thing to obtain afterwards.

Photograph the load on the vehicle before it is unloaded where you can do so safely from a distance, together with the paperwork if it is in your hand.

One picture of the load and its documentation answers most later questions about what arrived and in what condition.

Stay well clear of vehicles and lifting operations, and follow whatever the site team asks about where you may stand while a load is being moved.

Note the name of the supplier as printed on the paperwork and the delivery reference, rather than relying on the name written on the side of the vehicle.

Deliveries are frequently made by a third party, and the printed reference is what any query has to be raised against.

Hand the original documents on to the contractor promptly and note in your log that you did so, keeping your copy for your own record.

Paperwork retained by the owner and forgotten causes queries the site team cannot answer, and yours is the copy that goes missing last.

Photograph the label on packaging before it is opened, including any reference, batch marking and origin printed on it, and keep the image in the log.

Once packaging goes into a skip, the only way to identify a material is from a picture somebody took at the door.

Copy references exactly as printed rather than describing what the material appears to be, so the entry identifies one item rather than a family of them.

Descriptions such as the pale tile could apply to many products, and none of them can be ordered from your wording.

Note where a batch marking differs between loads of the same item, and raise it as a question rather than assuming it makes no difference.

Whether material from different batches can be mixed in one area is a question for the supplier and installer, never an owner judgement.

Keep any printed information that comes inside the packaging, such as handling notes and product documentation, rather than letting it go out with the wrapping.

This paperwork is what anybody maintaining the property later will want, and it is unobtainable once discarded.

Check the references on arriving goods against your record of what was accepted, and raise anything different as a question about what happened.

Substitutions sometimes travel through several hands, and the person delivering usually has no idea a change occurred.

Where material of the same type arrives in more than one load, note which load went into which part of the work if you are able to observe it.

If a question arises about one area later, knowing which supply it came from narrows the enquiry enormously.

Photograph any visible damage while the goods are still on or beside the vehicle, and note it on the delivery document as well as in your own log.

Damage recorded after a load has been moved and stacked is far harder to attribute, and the moment passes very quickly.

Where the load does not match the delivery document, record what appears to be missing in the terms used on the document rather than in your own description.

Queries are raised against the document wording, and a description in different words takes longer to resolve.

Note who you told about damage or a shortage, at what time and by what means, since this is usually the first question the supplier asks.

How promptly a problem was reported often matters, and only your own log can show when you raised it.

Where a load or part of a load goes back, record what went, why you were told it was going and who arranged it, rather than assuming it will be documented.

Returns are the least documented event on a site and produce the most confusion when supply is later reconciled.

Leave the decision about whether goods should be accepted or refused to the contractor, and confine yourself to recording what you saw and what you were told.

Accepting or rejecting materials is for the contractor and the appointed professionals; an owner decision at the door can create problems for everybody.

Log a replacement delivery as its own entry linked to the original, rather than amending the first entry, so the sequence of what happened stays visible.

Amended entries hide the fact that a load had to be replaced, which is precisely what somebody may want to trace.

Note where each load was put, particularly anything left outdoors, on soft ground, against the property or in a shared area.

Storage location explains a good deal about material condition later and about complaints from neighbours in the meantime.

Photograph how stored material has been covered or raised off the ground, and record any change in that arrangement over the course of the work.

Coverings get moved and not replaced, and pictures taken at intervals show whether protection was maintained.

Ask the site team what conditions each stored material needs while it waits, and record what you are told rather than applying general assumptions.

Storage and handling requirements come from the manufacturer and installer; ask them rather than assuming that keeping something dry is enough.

Note where material is being stored inside the property, particularly anything stacked on a floor or in a room that is otherwise finished.

Ask the contractor and a qualified professional before material is stacked anywhere inside; what a floor can carry is not an owner judgement.

Record deliveries left when nobody was present, including where they were left and whether they were visible from the street.

Unattended deliveries account for most disappearances and disputes, and the record of where they were left is what any query starts from.

Ask who is responsible for materials once they are on the property and record the answer, particularly for anything stored outside the working area.

Responsibility for goods on site and any cover for them are questions for the contractor, your own insurer and your own legal adviser.

Write down which items you are supplying yourself and tell the contractor and appointed professionals plainly, rather than assuming everybody has understood.

Owner-supplied items are the most common source of confusion about who is providing what, and the confusion surfaces at the worst moment.

Ask what information the site needs about an owner-supplied item before it arrives, and pass that on rather than waiting until it is unpacked.

Preparation for an item usually happens well before it appears, and it depends on information only you hold.

Keep your own record of what you ordered, from whom and what reference it carries, and file it with the project record rather than with household paperwork.

These records are needed by the site team and by anybody maintaining the property afterwards, and they usually live somewhere else entirely.

Open and look over owner-supplied items on arrival where doing so is straightforward, and photograph the condition before anything is stored or moved on.

Any question with the supplier about condition is easiest to raise promptly, and it is entirely your own to raise.

Record anything the supplier tells you about how an item is meant to be fixed or connected, and pass that on rather than keeping it in your own notes.

Whether an owner-supplied item can be used as intended in its position is for the qualified professionals and installer to establish, not the supplier alone.

Note where owner-supplied items are kept and who has agreed to look after them, since these are often stored apart from everything else.

Items in a spare room or garage are outside the normal site arrangements and are easily damaged or forgotten.

Pull the references and batch markings out of the log into a short list of what was actually used where, so a later repair does not begin with guesswork.

The log is long and mostly irrelevant afterwards; the short list is the part anybody will actually use.

Ask what happens to surplus material and whether some can be kept, and record what was retained and where it has been put.

Retained material is the easiest way to match a repair, and it is normally cleared away without anybody asking.

Ask the contractor which surplus may be kept and how it should be stored; do not remove material from working areas yourself.

Gather the printed documentation that arrived with products into one place rather than leaving it in the rooms and cupboards it ended up in.

This paperwork is scattered by the end of a project and is the part most often missing from what is handed over.

Note anything that was ordered and never arrived, or arrived and was never fitted, and ask what is happening to each of those items.

Outstanding supply is easy to lose sight of once work stops, and nobody is tracking it once the site is quiet.

List any item where what was delivered differed from what was originally intended, together with what you were told at the time about the change.

Substitutions made mid-project are the hardest thing to reconstruct later, and they matter to anybody matching or maintaining the work.

Decide who else should hold the short list of materials used, including anybody maintaining the property or a future owner, and note who has a copy.

A record kept only by you helps nobody once the property changes hands or somebody else is looking after it.