2 min read
What NHBC and other warranty providers check for
New home warranty providers look for specific things during their inspections, and paperwork gaps show up in predictable places. Here's what they're checking, and how contractors get caught out.
NHBC and similar new home warranty providers carry out staged inspections through the build process, and while the technical standards they check against are detailed, in practice a large part of what determines a smooth inspection is whether the contractor can quickly evidence that a stage was completed correctly, not just whether it visually looks fine on the day.
Foundations and groundworks are a common flashpoint, because by the time an inspector visits, much of what was checked and approved has already been backfilled and is no longer visible. If the contractor can produce photos from the actual excavation and pour, showing depth, reinforcement, and ground conditions, that inspection tends to move quickly. Without them, the inspector is relying more heavily on their own visit notes from earlier stages, which may or may not have covered every detail that later becomes relevant.
DPC continuity, cavity trays, insulation continuity and thermal bridging at junctions come up constantly, for the same reason they cause problems with building control and with Part L compliance generally: they're covered quickly and are essentially unverifiable after the fact without photographic evidence. Warranty providers know this, which is exactly why they ask for it.
Where contractors get caught out most often isn't bad workmanship, it's an inability to produce evidence for work that was done correctly. An inspector who can't verify a stage isn't necessarily accusing the contractor of cutting corners, but they can't sign it off as satisfactory either, and a stage that isn't signed off can hold up the whole warranty application, which in turn can hold up completion, mortgage offers, and the sale itself if it's a development.
Keeping a running photographic record organised by build stage, rather than a general folder of site photos, turns warranty inspections from a source of stress into a fairly routine process. It's also worth keeping in mind that this same record is exactly what's useful if a warranty claim is ever made after handover, so the effort pays off twice.