Seven questions to ask before you engage anyone
Including us. These are the questions that separate a consultant running a regime from one issuing inspection reports — and the answers are easy to check.
Defect management is an easy service to describe and a hard one to evaluate. Two consultants quoting similar fees can be offering fundamentally different things: one walks the building and sends you a list, the other runs a documented regime that closes the work out and leaves you with evidence. The questions below make the difference visible in about ten minutes.
Take them to whoever you are considering. If we are on that list, hold us to exactly the same standard.
What exactly will I receive, and how often?
“An inspection report” is not an answer. You want the artefacts named and the cadence agreed: staged inspection records, a live register, a reporting rhythm, and a defined close-out pack at the end.
A specific list and a specific frequency — weekly or fortnightly reporting, a register updated continuously rather than at milestones, and a named set of documents you hold at sign-off.
Is the register cost-coded?
This is the question that separates a task list from a commercial instrument. Without cost codes you know how many defects are open; you do not know what they are worth or who wears them.
Yes, with an explanation of how exposure is attributed by trade and cost code — and ideally a demonstration on real or sample data rather than a description.
Who owns the register, and what happens to it at the end?
Registers that live in a consultant's private system have a habit of becoming inaccessible at exactly the moment you need them — a bond inspection, a warranty claim, a dispute.
You own the data, you can export it at any time, and you receive it in a usable form at handover. Any hesitation here is worth pressing on.
How do you verify a defect is actually closed?
Most registers close items on a trade's say-so. That is how a register can read 98% complete while the building is visibly not.
Closure requires reinspection by the consultant, with a dated record and photographic evidence. A trade reporting completion should move an item to claimed, not closed.
Will you work in our platform, or make us adopt yours?
If a project already runs Procore, Aconex or PlanRadar, a consultant who insists on a parallel system creates precisely the fragmentation you hired them to fix.
Willingness to work in your platform, with their own register available when you do not have one. The method should be portable; the tool should not be a condition.
What does your independence actually mean here?
Independence is claimed by nearly everyone. What matters is whether it survives commercial pressure.
A clear statement of who they are engaged by, who they report to, and what happens when their findings are inconvenient for the person paying — plus no financial interest in the rectification work.
Would this reporting hold up if it ended up in a dispute?
Most close-out documentation is never tested. The documentation that is tested — at NCAT, at a bond inspection, in an expert report — needs to have been built for that from day one.
Yes, with reasons: dated records, location and photographic evidence, a clear chain from identification to rectification to verification, and experience of the documentation actually being relied upon.
One more, if the project is residential
Ask what happens after handover. Class 2 buildings carry a strata building bond inspection at 15–18 months, another at around two years, and statutory warranties running six years for major defects. A consultant who thinks the job ends at practical completion is leaving you to face those alone. The strata building bond guide sets out what those milestones actually require.
How Group 4 answers them
Rather than assert it: the register is cost-coded and you can click through a working version on sample project data — filters, exposure by trade, close-out velocity and a generated report. You own your data. Closure requires reinspection. Group 4 works in your platform or brings its own. And the same documentation standard is what gets used when a close-out becomes a dispute, which is the honest test of whether it holds up.
For how the regime runs end to end, see the service. If you want a read on your own project before committing to anything, the Close-Out Health Check is fixed-fee and takes two days. And if you are still weighing whether you need anyone at all, start with independent consultant versus your own team.
Run your close-out on a system built for it.
A quick call, no obligation. Louis will tell you straight what your close-out needs.