The snagging list a Pembrokeshire builder owes the client

The last fix is in at a house in Narberth. The client has paid most of the bill. You stand in the kitchen, run a hand over the worktop, and start a list in your head: the door that sticks, the tap that drips, the paint near the skirting that wants a second coat.

That list gets written on the van dashboard on the way to the next job in Milford Haven. By the time you are back in Haverfordwest the next morning, half of it is gone. Three weeks later the client emails asking where the handover pack is: the certificates, the guarantee dates, who to call about the boiler.

Nothing here is hard. It is a second job that arrives the day the first one ends, and it has no slot in the week.

The maths (a sketch, not a client figure)

Assume a finished job needs a snagging pass and a handover pack. Assume the admin sits with the person who ran the job, at an assumed £30 an hour. Both are assumptions, not a measured figure.

• × 90 minutes a week across live jobs = the time cost
• × £30 an hour = £45 a week
• × 46 working weeks = £2,070 a year

Now the same work with a draft step. The list is captured as it is found, the pack is drafted from the job details, and a person reads and approves it before anything reaches the client.

Score it: the three checks

• Hours. An hour and a half a week or more, once the walk round, the typing and the calls about certificates are counted. That clears the bar for most builders.
• Repeat. Snag lists follow the same shape every time: room, fault, who fixes it, by when. If that shape can be written on one page, it can be drafted for you.
• Risk-if-wrong. A missed snag is a return visit and an argument about who pays for it. A pack without the right certificate can hold up a sale or the final payment. That is why the completion decision stays with a person.

Try one thing this week (free)

Before you leave your current job, walk it room by room and write every snag on one sheet in the client's words, with a date beside each line. Hand the client a copy and keep one for yourself. By Friday you will know how long the list really takes to gather, and whether your memory was as good as you thought.

Where a person stays

Software can hold the list as you walk the job and turn it into a tidy document. It can pull the guarantee dates and certificates into one pack and flag which jobs are waiting on a signature. A named person still decides what counts as done, what the client is told, and when the pack goes out. The completion decision, the wording of anything awkward, and every financial, compliance or legal line stay with a human. Nothing is sent unchecked.

FAQ