Structural Alteration Evidence Pack Checklist

Write at the front of the pack who it is for — a future buyer, a surveyor, a lender or your own later self — and what they will be trying to establish.

A stated audience keeps the pack focused on evidence rather than on the project correspondence that surrounds it.

Make a separate pack for each structural alteration rather than one file for the whole project, and name each after what was altered and where.

Questions arrive about one alteration at a time, and a pack that answers a single question is far more usable than a project archive.

Start the pack while the work is under way rather than at the end, and add to it as each document and photograph becomes available.

Nearly everything in this pack is easy to obtain on the day and difficult to obtain a month later, which is the whole point of it.

Write one short description of what was altered, in plain words, and put it at the front where somebody can read it without opening a drawing.

A reader who cannot tell from the pack what was actually done has to reconstruct it from technical documents, which most will not attempt.

Record when the work started, when the structural part of it was completed and when the project as a whole finished.

Dates are what allow a later reader to place the documents in sequence and to see whether anything is missing between them.

Ask in writing, early in the project, for the documents you want at the end, and list them individually rather than asking for everything.

A specific written list is answerable; a general request for paperwork at the end tends to produce whatever is nearest to hand.

Ask whether what you will receive at the end can be stated in the appointment or the agreement, rather than left as an understanding.

Documents named in an agreement are part of what was engaged for, and that conversation is straightforward at the start and awkward later.

Ask for the documents while the engineer and builder are still engaged on the project, rather than waiting until everything has concluded.

Once an engagement has ended, obtaining documents depends entirely on goodwill and on the other party still having them.

Record the name, organisation and contact details of everyone involved as they stand today, and put that page in the pack.

Contact details change, people retire and organisations close, and the details recorded at the time are the only ones that are certain to have been correct.

Ask each party what they normally provide at the end of a job like this, and note anything they name that you had not thought to ask for.

Professionals often issue documents as a matter of course that owners never think to request, and asking the open question surfaces them.

If something cannot be provided, record what it was, who said so and the reason given, and keep that note in the pack.

A recorded absence with a reason is worth far more to a later reader than a pack that is silently missing something.

Ask for the drawings that were issued for the work to be built from, complete with their title blocks and revision information.

The title block carries the revision and the date, which is what tells a later reader whether they are holding the version that was used.

Ask whether calculations exist for the alteration, whether you can be given a copy, and record the answer either way.

Calculations are sometimes retained rather than issued, and knowing which of those applies is itself useful information for the pack.

Ask whether anything was changed during the work compared with what was drawn, and ask for that to be described in writing.

Changes made on site are the most common gap between the pack and the building, and they are only recoverable while people remember.

For each change, record who decided it, who agreed to it, when, and whether a revised drawing was issued afterwards.

A change agreed verbally with nothing issued is a hole in the record, and it is one a later reader will find immediately.

Keep superseded drawings out of the main pack, or clearly marked, so that nobody later reads an earlier version as the final one.

Mixed revisions in one folder is the most reliable way to make a well-assembled pack misleading.

Ask whether anything records what was there before the alteration, since the drawings usually describe the new work and not the arrangement it replaced.

A later reader can see what was built but not what it replaced, and the removed arrangement is frequently the thing they are asking about.

Ask when each part of the work will be covered up, and put those dates in your diary so that photographs are taken beforehand.

The window is short and does not come back, and the most common reason photographs are missing is that nobody knew the date.

Photograph the places where new work meets existing work, with something in the frame that shows where in the building you were standing.

A close photograph with no context is hard to place later, and a reader needs to know which junction they are looking at.

Ask the engineer and the builder whether they photographed the work, and whether you can have copies for the pack.

Others usually have better-positioned photographs than an owner can take, and they are readily given while the job is live.

Ask whether anybody visited while the work was open, who it was, when, and what record exists of that visit.

A record of who looked at something before it was covered is among the things later readers ask about most often.

Label every photograph with the date and the location in the building, rather than relying on the file information to survive.

Photographs get copied between devices and folders for years, and the information attached to the file is the first thing lost.

Take photographs from wherever you are permitted to stand, and ask somebody working there to take any view you cannot reach safely.

Asking for a photograph is straightforward, and it avoids an owner standing somewhere they should not be to get one.

Do not enter an area where structural work is in progress or where temporary support is in place; ask for the photograph instead.

Ask for a list of the structural components installed, described in enough detail that somebody could identify them later.

A later reader needs to know what is in the wall, and a plain list is more useful than an invoice or a delivery note.

Ask for whatever documentation came with those components, including anything the supplier provided about their use, their care or their expected life.

Documentation supplied with components is discarded routinely on site and is difficult to obtain afterwards.

Ask whether anything installed here expects maintenance, inspection or attention at any point in the future, and record what you are told.

Owners are frequently left holding maintenance obligations they were never told about, and this is the moment to find out.

What an installed component expects in maintenance is a question for the party who supplied or installed it, and nothing collected here establishes that any such obligation has been met.

Ask whether any protective treatment was applied, to what, and whether that carries anything you need to know about later.

Treatments applied during work are invisible afterwards, and the fact that they were applied is worth recording for a later reader.

Record who supplied and who installed each significant component, since those are often different parties from the main builder.

Later questions tend to be answerable only by the party who actually did the work, and that is not always the obvious one.

Ask who designed the temporary support used while the work was open, and whether any record of that exists, since it is frequently a separate appointment.

Temporary support is designed, used and removed while the work is open, and no trace of it survives unless somebody asks while it is still in place.

Temporary support during structural work is a design responsibility of its own; ask who held it rather than assuming it belonged to whoever carried out the work.

Record what completion or approval paperwork exists for this alteration, who issued it and when, and put copies in the pack.

This is the first thing a later reader looks for, and its presence or absence is the single most consequential fact in the pack.

Where something does not exist, write that down explicitly with what you were told about why, rather than leaving a silent gap.

A silent gap is read as an oversight; a recorded absence with an explanation is read as information.

What paperwork applies to a particular alteration varies by location and project; confirm what applies with the relevant local authority and your own adviser.

Where the work involved a neighbouring owner or a shared structure, record what arrangements were made and keep copies of the correspondence.

Arrangements with neighbours are among the things a future buyer's adviser asks about, and reconstructing them later is difficult.

Obligations towards a neighbouring owner vary by location and tenure; what applied to this alteration is a question for your own adviser rather than something to settle from the correspondence.

Keep the correspondence that records decisions, and leave out the correspondence that is only scheduling, so the pack stays readable.

A pack that includes every message is as unusable as one that includes none, and the filter is whether it records a decision.

Write down a question for your own adviser about what a future buyer is likely to ask for, rather than deciding that yourself.

What is expected in a sale varies, and an early answer to that question shapes what is worth chasing while it is still easy.

Put a single index at the front listing everything in the pack, including the items you were unable to obtain.

The index is what makes the pack navigable and what tells a later reader whether something is missing or simply elsewhere.

Keep the pack both digitally and as paper where you can, and store the two in different places rather than together.

Digital files move between devices and services over a decade, and a paper copy in the house is the one that survives that.

Store the pack with the documents that would pass to a future owner, rather than in a project folder that will be cleared out.

Project folders get tidied away once a job is finished, and that is precisely where these documents are usually lost.

Make sure more than one person in the household knows the pack exists, what it covers and where it is kept.

The most common way this kind of record is lost is that only one person ever knew about it.

Look at the pack again when a sale is contemplated, while there is still time to ask somebody a question about it.

A gap discovered early in a sale is sometimes recoverable, and the same gap discovered late usually is not.