Construction

Subcontractors, sites and handover: document control where mistakes cost most.

Property development

A development, from land purchase to handoverAdvancedTwo or three years, many actors, and documentation that outlives all of them.
Handover documentation and warrantiesAdvancedWhat has to be handed over at the end, and why it is gathered during rather than after.
The developer who doesn't buildAdvancedYou lay no bricks and you are the one answering to the buyer. Everything others do ends up in your file.

Residential building

Answering to a hundred buyersGoing furtherThe project ended and a hundred new relationships began, each with its own file, its own warranty and its own way of writing.

Non-residential building

Refurbishment

Refurbishment and renovationGoing furtherSmall jobs, many at once, and clients living on site.

Civil works

Roads

Road maintenance and linear worksGoing furtherThe work is not in one place: it is spread over a hundred kilometres, and each job lasts a morning.

Railways

Working inside a window of hoursAdvancedYou have from one until five in the morning. Anything not settled before you go down gets settled next month.

Ports

Coordinating several firms in one windowAdvancedFour firms, one window and a sequence that allows no improvisation. If one cannot get in, the other three do not work either.

Airports

Signing that it can reopenAdvancedAt five in the morning somebody has to say the service can resume. That signature rests on what others did overnight.

Hydraulic works

Measuring every day that nobody looks atAdvancedYour installation generates data continuously and most of it nobody reads. The day it is requested, it is worth exactly what was retained.

Civil engineering

The designer questioned years laterAdvancedThat was calculated eight years ago on certain data and certain criteria. Today somebody asks about it, and only what you filed exists.

Architecture

Structures and foundations

Structural material acceptance on siteAdvancedWhat to check when the lorry arrives, because afterwards it is already installed.

Masonry

The one who takes delivery and installs itGoing furtherYou sign a delivery note at seven in the morning with the lorry double-parked. That slip is all that will remain of the consignment.

Electrical installations

The one who leaves cable inside the wallGoing furtherYour work is visible for three days. After that it is behind a wall and exists only if somebody photographed it.

Plumbing

The one who leaves pipe under the floorGoing furtherYours gets tested once, with nobody watching, and then it is covered in screed. That test is the whole of your defence.

HVAC

HVAC: from commissioning to maintenanceGoing furtherThe handover between whoever installs and whoever maintains is where the documentation later needed gets lost.

Insulation and waterproofing

The one who covers everyone else's workAdvancedYou do the closing, so somebody else's defect gets buried with your signature on top. What you do not flag beforehand becomes yours.

Facades and roofing

The one who installs what the street seesGoing furtherYour work is judged from the pavement, without a ladder and without context. A defect of yours is not discovered: it is seen.

Joinery

Making to measure from site dimensionsGoing furtherYou measure a site that is still moving and manufacture to that figure. If the site changed, the piece is scrap and the argument is who measured.

Painting and finishes

The one who finishes and inherits everyone else's knocksGoing furtherYou come in last, over everyone's mess, and whatever is unresolved on inspection day will be yours.

Lifts

Lifts and equipment inherited with the buildingGoing furtherInstalled once, they stay with the building for forty years, changing owner and maintenance firm along the way.

Building materials

The one supplying materials to the siteGoing furtherYou deliver a hundred consignments a month to twelve sites. Everyone remembers the lorry; nobody remembers the paperwork until the end.

Construction machinery

Site machinery: owned, hired and other people'sGoing furtherThree situations treated as one that are not: who keeps the paperwork and who answers for its use both change.

Demolition and site waste

Demolition and construction wasteAdvancedWhat gets thrown away is documented too, and some materials mean stopping before you start.

Building maintenance

Maintaining what somebody else builtGoing furtherYou are handed the keys to a building and an incomplete folder. Whatever is not in it you will discover by opening things.

Facility management