How to write a snagging list that gets fixed

What a snag actually is

A snag is work that is incomplete, not to specification, or damaged. It is not a variation, it is not a design query, and it is not a health and safety issue — those have their own routes and putting them on the snagging list is how they get lost. If an item needs a decision rather than a trade, it is a non-conformance or an RFI.

The five things every item needs

1. A place. Not “second floor”. The unit, the room, and ideally a pin on the drawing. Half the second visits to a job are somebody looking for the defect.
2. A description of the defect, not of the fix. “Worktop join at the sink run is open and unsealed” tells the trade what is wrong. “Reseal worktop” tells them what you guessed the answer was.
3. A photograph. One photograph removes an entire email thread. Take it as you raise the item, not later from the gallery.
4. A trade. Unassigned items do not get fixed; they get discussed.
5. A date. A target date makes a list sortable and makes “overdue” mean something. Without it, everything is equally urgent, which is the same as nothing being urgent.

How to describe a defect

Write what you can see, where it is, and what is wrong with it — in that order, in one sentence a trade can act on without ringing you.

Severity and priority are not the same thing

Severity is how bad the defect is: cosmetic, minor, moderate, significant. Priority is how soon it has to be dealt with, which depends on the programme and on what gets covered up next. A cosmetic scratch on a panel that is about to be boxed in is low severity and high priority.

The two-stage close

This is the single change that does most for a list. The trade marks an item fixed. Somebody else verifies it on site and marks it closed. An item is never closed by the party that fixed it.

Without it, “closed” means “somebody said so”, and the list stops being evidence. With it, every item carries two names and two dates, and a dispute is a five-second lookup rather than an afternoon.

Issuing it

Send each trade only their own items, as one document, with the photographs in it. A spreadsheet of the whole job filtered by a column heading gets ignored — reasonably, because it asks the reader to do your filing for you.

The list before handover, and the one after

The pre-handover list is yours. The defects-liability list that comes back from the client or the purchaser is somebody else’s, and it will arrive in their format. Keeping both against the same unit — same locations, same trades, same close-out rule — is what stops the second one turning into a separate, parallel job.

Project Audit Pro enforces the two-stage close, keeps the photograph on the item, and issues one document per trade — because those three things are where most lists fall over.