The snag list is the last document of a building job and the one most likely to be argued over, because it is the list that stands between a contractor and the rest of his money.
A good one is boring. Every item is specific enough that two people who dislike each other would still agree on whether it has been fixed. That is the only standard that matters, and almost every bad snag list fails it in the same place: the description.
Snag, defect, or something you are not owed
Three different things end up on the same list, and separating them early prevents most of the conflict:
- A snag is workmanship that has not been finished properly — a paint run, a misaligned cupboard door, silicone missing at a threshold. Fixed before final completion.
- A defect is something that has failed or will fail — a leak, a crack that is moving, a circuit that trips. Different urgency, and it may sit under the defects liability period rather than handover.
- A change of mind is not either. “We’d prefer the handle on the other side” is a variation, and putting it on the snag list is how a snag list becomes a negotiation.
What each item needs
| Field | Why |
|---|---|
| Location | Room, elevation, or grid. “Bathroom” on a house with three is not a location. |
| Description | Specific enough to be verifiable. “Paint” is an argument; “paint run on architrave, bedroom 2, hinge side” is an instruction. |
| Photograph | Settles nearly everything. A photo with a date on it removes the entire category of “that was already there”. |
| Trade | The list only becomes useful once it can be split into the part the plumber owns and the part the tiler owns. |
| Status | Three states, not two: open, fixed, and verified. Fixed is the contractor’s opinion. Verified is the client’s. |
| Date raised | Tells you which items have been open longest, which is not the same as which are most recent. |
Fixed and verified must be separate. A list with a single “done” column means the person who did the work is also the person certifying it, and the client has no way to disagree except by starting again.
How to run the walk
- Do it in one pass, room by room, in a fixed order. Wandering produces duplicates and misses whole rooms.
- Photograph as you go. Do not write “photo to follow”. It never does.
- Agree the list before you leave the building. A snag list emailed two days later invites a reply that starts “most of these were already discussed”.
- Sort by trade before issuing it. One subcontractor should get his own items, not forty items of which six are his.
- Re-walk only the fixed items. A full re-walk reopens closed arguments and adds items, which is how handover lists grow instead of shrinking.
The handover pack
The snag list is one document of several, and a client who is given a clean pack at handover is a client who argues less. See the practical completion checklist for the rest of it.