Stop 5 of 8 · Weekly
The punch list
Two hundred site photos and a voice note become a list by trade and floor, a packet per subcontractor, and a tracker that closes out.
Two hundred photos and a voice note
Hany walks floor six on a Tuesday afternoon with his phone. He comes back with two hundred and forty photos, a voice note that runs eleven minutes and a room by room scrawl on a printed floor plan. Historically that becomes a punch list on Thursday night, or on Sunday.
The photos and the note are the raw material. Turning them into a list per trade, in walking order, with a photo reference on every line, is assembly work.
From the walk to the list
Here are the photos and my voice note from the floor six walk. Build a punch list. Group by trade, then by room number in ascending order. Each line: room number, trade, the defect in one sentence written the way a foreman would read it, and the photo file name. Use the room numbers and finishes from the finish schedule and the floor plan in this Project rather than guessing from the photo. Where you cannot tell the room from a photo, put the item in an UNPLACED group rather than assigning it. Flag separately any item that looks like a design conflict rather than defective work.
Take the unplaced group first. It is usually six or eight items and they are usually the ones that matter.
Compare the floor six punch list against the finish schedule in this Project, room by room. For each room, list any specified finish, fitting or accessory that does not appear anywhere in the photos or the list. This is a list of things I might not have looked at, not a list of defects.
That second prompt is the one that catches the missing door stops in eleven rooms.
The packets
From the floor six list, produce one packet per trade. Each packet: a heading with the trade, the floor and the date, then the items in room walking order, then a sign off column and a date column left blank. Under two pages per trade wherever possible. Do not include any item flagged as a design conflict and do not include items belonging to another trade even when they are in the same room.
The tracker
Build the floor six closeout tracker as a table I can paste into Excel: item number, floor, room, trade, defect, raised date, packet sent date, status, verified date, verified by. Fill in what you know from the list and leave the rest blank. Then give me a second short table with the count of open items by trade so I have the number for the owner walk.
After the re-walk, paste the new photos back in and ask which open items they show as complete, which are still open and which no photo covers. Marking an item verified stays yours, on site.