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Punch List

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From the development manager's perspective, walking the completed project and establishing the punch list can be long and painful.  Or if you have detail oriented design and construction team that wants to deliver a high level of customer service to the owner, it can be very little work for you. 

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Talk with the design and construction teams about how the punch walk will be executed.  Have plan going into it.  Don’t just have everyone show up on the punch walk day and think it is going to go smooth and fast.  It won’t without a plan.

  • Who will be leading the punch walk effort?  The GC or the architect?

  • Who will be recording the items to be corrected or completed?  The GC or the architect?

  • How will the punch list items be recorded?  With pencil and pad?  On construction management software or an app that digitally records punch list items?

  • Will there just be one team/group walking the punch list, or will you divide it up into separate teams to cover separate areas of the project? 

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One of my pet peeves during a punch walk is when a team member identifies a problem but doesn't confirm that the recorder wrote it down.  If you identify a problem, but it doesn’t get written down, it won’t get fixed.  You would be surprised at the amount of people on a punch list team that walk by, point at and call out a problem, then just keep walking on, not caring that it did not get recorded.  They are just wasting time and not performing a good punch walk.  If it does not get recorded, it will not get fixed.  You don’t need people identifying problems, you need people fixing problems.  Tell the punch walk team to sit there at the problem location until they are sure the recorder recorded it. 

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The person doing the recording has to be fast and accurate.  If she is slow, everyone is going to get frustrated, and will naturally want to just push through the punch list to get it over with.

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The GC should provide a roll of blue tape to each team member so that they can put a piece of tape on top of the issue that needs to get fixed (if applicable).  This helps the subcontractor find the problem that needs to get fixed. 

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The mechanical, electrical and plumbing engineers should all walk the completed project to complete the punch list for their design disciplines. 

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You as the development manager have to confirm all the punch list items were fixed.  You shouldn’t just take the GC’s word for it.  You can revisit the project site and re-walk the project with the punch list in hand and confirm everything got fixed.  Or you can have the GC take a picture of everything that got fixed and put that picture next to the item on the punch list.  Only after you have confirmed all the punch list items have been fixed should you deem that the project has achieved “final completion” and pay the GC their retainage payment.  A GC’s retainage payment is a large amount of money for a reason – to motivate him to complete the punch list quickly so he can get that payment.

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Sometimes there may be some punch list items that the GC just can't complete quickly because of issues like long lead times.  In that case, you may consider paying the GC the bulk of his retainage, and just withhold 150% of the value of the outstanding punch list items.  For example, if your construction contract is for $30 million, your retainage is likely 5%, or $1.5 million.  If the GC has completed all of the punch list except for a handful of items worth out $20,000, you shouldn't hold up his full $1.5 million retainage payment.  Withhold $30,000 (150% of $20,000) for the outstanding punch list items, and pay him the balance. 

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Next Page: Closeout Documents & Procedures

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