Snagging

Snagging is the process of going through completed or near-complete work to find minor defects, unfinished items and anything not up to standard, and getting them put right. The list of items is a snag list, or in some contracts a punch list.

Snags are, by definition, minor. A door that binds, a paint finish that has not been made good, a missing mastic run, an ironmongery item fitted the wrong way round. Individually trivial, collectively the difference between a job that feels finished and one that does not.

Snags versus defects

The distinction matters contractually and is regularly muddled.

A snag is work that was never completed properly in the first place, identified at or before practical completion.

A defect appears afterwards, during the defects liability period. It may be a latent fault, a component failing in service, or workmanship that only shows up under use.

The same physical problem can fall into either category depending on when it is found, which is why the inspection at completion is worth doing properly rather than quickly.

The effect on completion

Whether snags prevent practical completion depends on how serious they are. Minor items that do not stop the client using the building for its intended purpose generally do not. They are listed, and the contractor returns to close them out.

Items that prevent beneficial use, or that touch safety or statutory compliance, are a different matter, and a client is entitled to withhold certification for them. Because practical completion triggers the release of half the retention, the start of the defects period and the end of liquidated damages, the argument about which category an item falls into is rarely academic.

Why closing out takes longer than expected

Producing the list is fast. Clearing it is not, because it usually needs several trades back on site in a particular order, often after they have demobilised and moved to other jobs. A snag that needs the electrician after the plasterer, who needs the decorator after that, is three visits and a fortnight rather than an afternoon.

Contractors who snag their own work before the formal inspection reach completion faster, simply because the obvious items are already gone by the time the client walks the building.

Tracking each item with an owner, a trade and a status, against the project rather than on a spreadsheet emailed round, is what stops the list stalling. That is what Sync’s delivery management is built for, and the closed-out record then forms part of what is handed over with the O and M manual at handover.