New Home Construction Inspections – Your Final Inspection and Maintenance Inspections

A PCI – Practical Completion Inspection (also referred to as a ‘Handover’ or ‘Final’ Inspection’) – is an important part of your new build process. It takes place at the completion of your build before you take possession of your new home and provides an important opportunity for any faults and defects to be identified and rectified before you move into your new home.

A PCI is carried out as the last in a series of staged inspections at critical points throughout the build process. By this stage, we recommend that you already have your base/steel, frame, lock-up/pre-plaster, and fixing stage inspections carried out by an independent inspector.

If serious defects are identified, you are entitled to request your builder to fix them, and this can be followed by a re-inspection to ensure all issues have been satisfactorily dealt with before final contract payments are made.

The following elements should be checked as part of a comprehensive PCI inspection:

• The flooring is laid and checked
• Fixtures and fittings are installed correctly and drawers and doors are aligned
• All wet areas have been appropriately sealed and caulked
• External treatments, including caulking to expansion joints, have been completed and the workmanship meets the applicable standard
• Paint finishes meet the standards set out in the Guide to Standards and Tolerances
• All hardware is fitted, including doors
• All plumbing has been completed

These elements should all be checked against the Guide to Standards & Tolerances 2015, referencing the relevant Australian Building Code.

Maintenance Reports

During the 3 months maintenance period, a builder must fix any additional defects that may arise. Whilst most problems are detected during the building process, some minor defects become more evident once the house has been lived in for a while.

For example, this may include doors or windows that do not close properly, movement or creaking in floors or cracking of cornice. Evidently, there are general wear and tear items that will naturally deteriorate over time once you’ve settled into your new home. These may include paint peeling, marks and chips on walls or grout cracking. It is the responsibility of the house owner to maintain the house to prevent any further deterioration.

However, it’s important to know that as a new home owner, you are entitled to have any defects rectified if they are considered to be the builder’s responsibility, taking into account any warranty given by manufacturers. If your maintenance period expires, all repair costs will fall to your responsibility, not your builders. For this reason, we recommend that you check your contract for the timing on your maintenance period to ensure that you don’t miss out on this opportunity to identify and resolve any reasonable defects.

Subsequently, a Maintenance inspection covers all the items in a Final Handover (PCI) inspection, looking for any potential long-term defects. Before the inspection takes place, our clients are also encouraged to let their Inspector know of any particular concerns they have with the house.

For all clients who have undertaken a PCI inspection with us, we can arrange to carry out a Maintenance inspection within your time period. We can also deliver Maintenance inspections for any client, regardless of whether we have done any prior stage inspections for them.