The Snag List: How Professionals Run a Final Inspection

Snagging has a reputation as the least technical job on a project: walk around, point at things, make a list. Done that way it produces a list that is half wrong, gets argued for three weeks, and still misses the thing that turns into a warranty claim eight months later.

Done properly it is a controlled process with a defined scope, a repeatable route, a grading system and a closeout loop. Here is that process.

Snag or defect?

The words get used interchangeably and should not be. A snag is minor unfinished or imperfect work identified before handover — a paint run, a stiff window, missing sealant, a chipped tile. A defect is a failure of workmanship or materials that emerges after handover, during the defects liability period: a leak, a crack, a floor that has lifted.

Snags are about finishing the job. Defects are about whether the job holds up. Getting the distinction right matters because they sit in different parts of the contract — snags block practical completion, while defects are addressed under the liability period with its own notice periods and its own half of the retention.

When to inspect

Timing determines the quality of the list more than any other factor.

Too early and you produce a list of work that simply is not finished. Everyone wastes time recording items the contractor already knows about, and the real snags are buried in the noise.

Too late — after occupation — and it becomes impossible to distinguish site damage from occupier damage. That argument has no winner.

The window is narrow: after the builder's clean, before furniture and before handover. Insist on the clean first. Dust hides hairline cracks, scratches on glass and marks on paintwork, and an inspection through dust generates a second inspection.

The method: a fixed route

Professional snaggers do not wander. They walk a fixed sequence, and within each room they follow the same order every time. The pattern is simple and it is the entire trick:

1. Work outside in, top down. External envelope and roof first, then top floor down to ground, then external works last.
2. Within each room, box the space. Enter, turn left, and work clockwise around the walls. Then floor. Then ceiling. Then services — switches, sockets, lights, plumbing. Never break the order, even in a room that looks perfect.
3. Operate everything that moves. Every door through its full swing. Every window opened, closed and locked. Every drawer and cupboard. Every tap, hot and cold. Every flush. Every switch and socket.
4. Look from two heights. Standing, then crouched. Floor-level defects — skirting gaps, tile lippage, paint stops — are invisible from standing height.
5. Use raking light. A torch held flat against a wall reveals plaster undulation, roller marks and filler shadows that overhead light hides completely.

Number the rooms on the floor plan before you start and record against those numbers. "Bedroom 2" means nothing on a three-bedroom floor six weeks later; "Room 04, north wall, 1.2 m from west corner" is unarguable.

Don't build the form on site Construction Forms & Templates carries ready-made snag registers, inspection checklists and handover certificates — fill them in on your phone and issue the same day.

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What to record, and how

Every entry in the register needs eight fields. Fewer than eight, and the item becomes negotiable:

Plus a photograph against every reference. The photograph is what stops the argument.

One discipline is worth more than the rest: describe the condition, not the remedy. Write "sash does not close fully at top rail", not "adjust hinges". The moment you specify the fix, you have taken responsibility for whether the fix works — and if the adjusted hinge still does not close, that is now your problem, not the joiner's.

Grading severity

An ungraded list of two hundred items tells the contractor nothing about what to do first, so everything gets done in the order it appears. Three grades are enough:

• A — blocks handover. Anything affecting safety, weather-tightness, security or function. A window that will not lock. A socket with no earth. An unsealed wet area.
• B — fix before handover. Visible defects in occupied areas that do not affect function. Chipped tiles, damaged paintwork, poor sealant lines.
• C — acceptable into the defects period. Cosmetic items in low-visibility locations that can be batched with later work.

Be honest with the grading. A list where everything is grade A is a list nobody believes, and it costs you the authority to insist when something genuinely is.

The de-snagging loop

The list is the easy half. Closing it out is where projects lose weeks.

1. Issue within 24 hours. A snag list issued a week after the walk has already lost credibility, and the site has moved on.
2. Issue by trade, not just as one document. The joiner needs their fourteen items, not all two hundred. One master register, filtered views per trade.
3. Set a single re-inspection date. Not rolling closeout. One date, everything grade A and B complete by then.
4. Re-inspect only the open items. With the photographs. Close them individually, with a closing photograph.
5. Expect a small second round. Fixing one snag often creates another — touch-up paint that does not match, a re-hung door that now catches the frame. Budget one short third visit.
6. Sign off explicitly. A dated register with every item closed, signed by both parties, attached to the handover certificate. Anything still open moves to the defects list by name, never by silence.

What actually turns up

Across residential handovers, the same items dominate almost every list:

• Doors and windows — misaligned, catching the frame, locks not engaging, uneven gaps. Consistently the largest single category.
• Paint — roller marks, thin coverage at edges, overspray on hardware, colour mismatch at touch-ups.
• Tiling — lippage, inconsistent grout lines, cut tiles at awkward corners, hollow tiles that sound when tapped.
• Sealant — missing at wet-area junctions, applied unevenly, wrong grade in showers.
• Electrical — plates not flush or not level, sockets on a different height in the same room, unlabelled distribution board.
• Plumbing — slow drainage, weak seals at waste connections, taps with reversed hot and cold.
• Skirting and beading — gaps at corners, poor scribes, nail holes not filled.
• Cleaning — plaster and paint residue on glass, tile spacers left in place, protective film left on hardware.

Knowing the pattern does not replace the walk. It tells you where to look hardest when you are three floors in and losing concentration.

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