Discovered Condition Change Record Checklist

Agree before opening-up work begins that anything unexpected is photographed where it is before it is moved, cleared or dealt with.

The condition as found exists only until somebody starts working on it, and no later photograph can recreate it.

Agree who is told first when something is found, by what route, and how quickly, rather than leaving it to whoever is nearest.

Discoveries are reported to whoever is convenient by default, which is rarely the person who needs to know.

Agree what happens to the rest of the work while a discovery is being considered, and who decides whether anything continues.

Deciding this in advance prevents a decision being made by inertia while everybody waits for a call.

Agree that anything suspected of being immediately dangerous goes straight to the appropriate emergency provider rather than through this routine.

A recording routine is for ordinary discoveries and must never delay a response to something urgent.

Any suspected immediate danger, including anything involving gas, electricity or structural instability, goes to the relevant emergency provider immediately.

Agree who can authorise work to proceed on a discovery, and confirm whether a member of your household can do so in your absence.

Authority given informally to whoever answers the phone is how decisions get made by the wrong person.

Accept that discoveries are ordinary in work on an existing building, and treat the routine as normal rather than as planning for failure.

A routine described as normal is used; one described as an emergency procedure tends not to be.

Take wide photographs showing where in the building you are before taking close ones, so the close images can be located afterwards.

Close photographs of a discovery are frequently unusable later because nothing in them says where they were taken.

Include something in the frame that establishes position, such as a doorway, a corner or an opening that will still be there.

Context that survives the works is what makes an image locatable years afterwards.

Photograph what surrounds the discovery as well as the thing itself, since the surrounding condition often turns out to be the relevant part.

What matters about a discovery is frequently its extent rather than its appearance at one point.

Note the date, the time and who was present when the discovery was made, before the day gets away from you.

These details are trivial at the moment and impossible to reconstruct a few weeks later.

Avoid moving or cleaning anything to get a better photograph, and photograph it as found even if the image is poor.

An imperfect image of the actual condition is worth more than a clear image of a disturbed one.

Do not handle, clear or investigate a discovery yourself; leave it to the qualified people attending and record what you can see.

Send the images somewhere they will not be lost that same day, and note where they were stored in your project record.

Photographs taken on a phone during a busy day are the ones most often lost before anybody needs them.

List everybody who saw the condition before it was dealt with, including anybody who came to the property specifically to look at it.

The attendance list is what makes it possible to ask anybody anything about it afterwards.

Write down what each person said at the time in the words they used, without turning an observation of theirs into a conclusion of your own.

An account of what somebody said is useful and honest; a paraphrase that sounds like a finding is neither.

Note who did not see it, particularly anybody whose view was later given from photographs rather than from attending.

Advice given from an image is given on a different basis from advice given at the opening, and the distinction matters.

Ask anybody who gave a view on site to confirm it in writing afterwards, and file their wording alongside your own note.

Their wording is the version that will reach the work, so it is worth having next to your summary of the conversation.

Note whether anybody from outside the project attended, such as a warranty inspector, a utility or an authority, and what happened as a result.

Third-party attendance at a discovery frequently produces a requirement that nobody records anywhere.

Write down each option as it was described to you, including any that were mentioned and immediately set aside.

The option set aside is the part people revisit, and it is the part nobody writes down.

Note who proposed each option, since one suggested by whoever is doing the work carries different information from one suggested by the designer.

The origin of a proposal tells you what it was optimising for, which is useful context later.

Ask, for each option in turn, what else it affects, including anything already built, anything already ordered and anything already decided.

Discoveries reach further than themselves, and the reach is what people fail to ask about under pressure.

Ask which of the options can be revisited later and which cannot, and note the answer against each one before you choose between them.

Under time pressure, reversibility is a more useful test than any other, and it is usually available as an answer.

Ask whether anybody thinks a different specialist should look at this before it is decided, and record the answer either way.

The question is easy to ask and is the one most likely to prevent a decision taken with insufficient information.

Where anybody suggests a further opinion is needed, obtain it before proceeding rather than after the condition has been covered again.

Ask whether the decision is urgent because of the condition itself or because of the programme, since those need different responses.

Programme pressure is negotiable in a way that a condition requiring immediate attention is not.

Ask what happens if the decision waits, in terms of work rather than in general terms, so the pressure can be judged rather than felt.

Consequences described concretely are usually smaller than they feel in a phone call.

Ask whether a provisional step exists that keeps the options open, such as leaving something accessible rather than closing it.

Keeping a discovery accessible is often cheap and buys the time a proper decision needs.

Write the decision down at the moment you make it, including what you were told and what you chose, before the day moves on.

A decision reconstructed later from memory loses exactly the parts that would explain it.

Note who agreed the decision, including which member of the household, since discoveries are often decided by whoever was reachable.

Household disagreements about a forced decision surface later and are much easier to resolve when the record shows who agreed.

Ask for the decision to be confirmed back to you in writing, particularly where it was reached in a phone call.

The version that reaches the work is theirs, not yours, which is why both should exist.

Ask whether anything already completed is affected by what was found, and whether any of that work has to be revisited as a result.

A discovery can invalidate work finished weeks earlier, which is nobody's first thought at the moment it is found.

Check whether anything already ordered is affected by the discovery, particularly anything being made to a dimension that may now have to change.

Made items are the most expensive thing to be caught by a change and the easiest to forget about.

Read your earlier decisions for any that assumed a condition now known to be different, and mark those for revisiting.

Decisions made on an assumption survive the correction of that assumption unless somebody goes looking.

Ask what the discovery does to the sequence, including anything that now has to happen in a different order.

Resequencing after a discovery changes which decisions are next, which is rarely communicated.

Note who else should be told, including any third party such as a warranty provider, an insurer or an authority.

Third parties with an interest usually find out late and occasionally have a requirement about it.

Whether a discovered condition has to be reported to your local authority or to a warranty provider is confirmed with them, not assumed.

Ask whether the same condition is likely to exist elsewhere in the building, and whether anything should be checked before it is reached.

A discovery in one area is frequently the first instance of something general rather than an isolated find.

Record which part of the original scope or drawing the change relates to, so the two can be read against one another later.

Changes filed without a reference to what they modify become impossible to reconcile with the drawings.

Mark the entry clearly as a discovered condition rather than a change you asked for, since the two have different origins.

A record that treats all changes alike loses the distinction that explains why this one happened at all.

Attach the photographs and the attendance note to the entry rather than filing them separately in a general image folder.

Evidence separated from the entry it belongs to is functionally lost.

Note which drawings no longer describe what is actually there, and ask whether any of them will be updated, annotated or reissued.

Superseded drawings circulate for a long time and are the ones somebody eventually works from.

Mark any part of the discovery that was not resolved at the time, and keep it visible rather than filing it with the closed entries.

Partially resolved discoveries are the ones that reappear at handover as a question nobody remembers.

Write down what is different in the finished building as a result of the discovery, in terms a future reader would understand.

This is the sentence a future owner or professional actually needs, and it is rarely written anywhere.

Note any new constraint the discovery created, such as something that must not be disturbed, and add it to your restricted-zone record.

Discoveries frequently leave behind an invisible constraint that only the people present would know about.

Record anything that was found and then left in place rather than removed, together with what you were told about it at the time.

Things left in place are the discoveries most likely to be found again by somebody else years later.

Move the photographs into the concealed-work record at handover rather than leaving them only in the file about the change itself.

The images are most useful where somebody looking for information about that location would find them.

Keep a short plain explanation of why the finished work differs from the original drawings, for whoever compares the two later.

Somebody will eventually notice the difference, and an explanation on file saves an investigation.