Snagging, and the list
that decides when a job ends.

A snag is a small piece of work you have not finished. A defect is work you finished badly. Both appear on the same list, in the same handwriting, on the same afternoon, and the difference between them decides who pays. Almost no snagging list in the industry records which is which.

Snag or defect, and why it matters

The words get used interchangeably on site and they are not interchangeable commercially.

A snag is incomplete work. A missing socket plate, an unpainted reveal, a door that has not been adjusted. It was always yours to do, it is still yours to do, and nobody is arguing about liability.

A defect is completed work that does not comply with the contract. It might be your workmanship, it might be a material failure, it might be a design that could never have worked, and it might be damage caused after you left by another trade or by the occupier. Liability is a live question, and the answer determines whether you fix it for free.

The commercial consequence is direct. A list of two hundred items, all called snags, on which forty are damage caused by the fit-out contractor who followed you, is a list on which you have just agreed to do forty items of free work by not objecting.

The cheapest moment to challenge an item is the moment it is written down. Every day after that, challenging it looks like reluctance rather than accuracy.

What practical completion actually changes

Practical completion is not the point at which the work is perfect. On most forms it is the point at which the works are complete enough for the employer to take possession and use them, with only minor items outstanding that do not prevent that use.

Reaching it changes four things at once, which is why it is fought over:

• Possession passes, and with it the risk of damage and the responsibility to insure.
• Liquidated damages for delay stop running.
• The first half of retention normally falls due.
• The defects liability period starts.

The argument on most jobs is whether the outstanding list is small enough to be minor. There is no arithmetic for that, which is why a well-kept list with each item categorised is worth more than an argument about a total.

The defects liability period

Commonly twelve months from practical completion, six on shorter works, and twenty-four is not unusual on mechanical and electrical packages. During it you have both an obligation and a right: an obligation to return and rectify defects that are yours, and a right to be the one who does it rather than being charged for somebody else's contractor.

That right is worth protecting. If the employer engages a third party to fix something without giving you the opportunity, the cost they are entitled to recover is frequently less than the invoice they will send you, and the argument is much easier if your record shows you asked for access and were refused.

The period ends with a making good certificate, or whatever the form calls it, and on many contracts the second half of retention is due on that certificate rather than on the date. That is covered in retention and the final account, and it is where a great deal of money quietly stops moving.

What a list has to record to be useful

Most snagging lists are a location, a description and nothing else. A list that survives an argument carries more:

1. Where, precisely. Room, level, grid or unit number. Half of all disputes about whether an item was done are disputes about which item was meant.
2. What, described so a person who was not there can act on it.
3. A photograph, dated. One image at the point of raising removes more argument than any amount of description.
4. Snag or defect, stated, and if a defect, whose.
5. Who raised it and when.
6. Who it is assigned to, by name or by trade, not to the ether.
7. Status, with dates. Raised, in progress, complete, verified. Complete and verified are different states and the difference is the whole point of the list.
8. A second photograph on close-out. This is the one nearly everybody skips, and it is what turns "we did that" into evidence.

Why the list grows after handover

Every contractor has watched a list of forty items become a list of a hundred and forty over the following month, and it is rarely bad faith. Four ordinary mechanisms cause it:

The building is being used for the first time, so things that were never tested are being tested. Following trades are working in finished areas and causing damage that arrives on your list because your list is the one that exists. The employer's own inspectors are looking with a different standard from the one the contract specifies. And items get re-raised because the close-out of the first version was never recorded anywhere the second inspector could see.

Only the last of those is entirely within your control, and it is the one that a shared, dated, photographed list eliminates completely.

Closing it out

A list is closed when every item is either verified complete, agreed to be somebody else's, or formally in dispute. Items that simply stop being mentioned are not closed. They reappear at final account, usually as a deduction, usually when the person who could have explained them has left.

Get the categorisation agreed early and in writing, even informally. An email that says these thirty items we accept, these eight are damage by others, these two we consider design issues is worth more than any subsequent argument, and it costs one afternoon while the job is still live.

Where to start, on Monday

Take the last job you handed over and count how many items on its snagging list carry a photograph. Then count how many carry a close-out photograph. On most lists the first number is low and the second is nearly zero, and that gap is the reason the final account took four months.

On the next job, change one thing only: photograph every item when it is raised and again when it is done. That single habit does more for the final account than any amount of arguing later.