Journal

Field notes from the defect register.

How we think about site software, compliance, and building things that don’t break at 4pm on a Friday.

2026.09.16
Guide
A building issue reporting system needs a front door
Ten past ten, level three lift lobby, corridor light out and the fire door not latching. Whether the resident's scan becomes a record or a suggestion depends on the door: not bolted, not wide open, a doorman.
5 min
A two-colour risograph poster of a door standing slightly ajar in its frame with a small orange square label on the wall beside it
2026.09.14
Playbook
Tracking DLP defects after the trades have gone
Month seven of a twelve-month defects liability period, the plumber is in Geelong and the owner's email is sitting in the info@ inbox. A DLP is a twelve-month job with no job number. Give it one and run it like a job.
5 min
A two-colour risograph poster of a long strip of twelve rectangular plates like a calendar, one near the end printed orange with a location pin standing on it
2026.09.02
Guide
Defect platform or full project-management suite?
We already pay for a platform and it has a defects module. Sometimes that is the right answer. Four questions that decide it, why dual entry always loses, and the export question to ask before you sign anything.
4 min
A two-colour risograph poster of a large sparse structural grid overlapped at its lower corner by a smaller, much denser grid in orange, the two inks mixing to burnt red where they cross
2026.08.31
Playbook
What makes a construction defect management tool site-ready?
The demo is a clean project on wifi, driven by the person who built it. Your site is a basement with no signal and a plasterer who has never logged into anything. Nine tests to run during the demo, including the ones we do not pass.
5 min
A two-colour risograph poster of a draughting rule spanning the frame, ruled with evenly spaced tick marks, a short span of them picked out in orange and drawn long
2026.08.26
Guide
The construction defect lifecycle: from open to verified close
Fixed is the most dangerous word in a defect register. It reads like an ending, and it is a claim made by the person with the strongest reason to make it. What each of the seven states is really claiming, and who is allowed to move it.
5 min
A two-colour risograph poster of seven stacked horizontal bands stepping upward like a section drawing, the final band picked out in orange
2026.08.24
Playbook
How to set up a construction defect register that survives handover
The register you hand over is never the register you kept, and about a third of it cannot be rescued in the fortnight before practical completion. The fields, the evidence rules and the status ownership to settle in the first hour of the job.
5 min
A two-colour risograph poster of a schedule grid whose entries are solid ink bars rather than words, its header band and one full column picked out in orange
2026.08.21
Guide
Construction defect tracking vs defect management: what changes after capture
A tracker records that the ensuite ceiling in 1204 is stained. It cannot tell you who accepted the fix or what they looked at when they accepted it. One defect, run both ways, and the four questions worth asking before you trust a tool.
5 min
A two-colour risograph poster of five square plan cells in a row, an orange line threading through them and running on past the last, which is drawn open
2026.08.12
Field notes
It is not just building sites: issue tracking for warehouses and factories
A bowed racking upright, a missing machine guard, a weeping refrigerant line. The capture-assign-close-with-evidence loop we built for building defects fits all three, even if some of the labels are still construction-shaped.
4 min
A two-colour risograph poster of a warehouse racking aisle receding in sharp perspective
2026.08.10
Product
For trades: closing a defect without ten messages and a site visit
"Fix the thing in the bathroom" costs a trade a wasted trip. A defect that arrives with a photo, an exact spot and one line lets you turn up once, fix it, and mark it done. Good capture respects the trade's time.
4 min
A two-colour risograph poster of a gloved hand driving a cordless drill into a fixing bracket on a workbench
2026.08.05
Guide
Common property, and the paper trail strata actually needs
Common property defects turn into owner disputes, and the committee that cannot show a dated, photographed, assigned record loses the argument at the AGM or with the builder. A single logged, tracked list is the paper trail strata needs to hold a builder to account inside the liability period.
4 min
A two-colour risograph poster of a grid of apartment mailboxes, the shared common property of an owners corporation
2026.08.03
Guide
After the keys change hands: defects for facilities managers
A tenant reports a warm meeting room and a stained ceiling tile, and that is a defect like any other. The report discipline that ends at handover is exactly what an FM needs for the next ten years, from warranty claims to surviving staff turnover.
4 min
A two-colour risograph poster of a hand logging a maintenance issue on a phone below a stained ceiling tile
2026.07.29
Guide
Fit-out runs on a two-week clock. Your defect tracking cannot lag it
Fit-out gives you two weeks a floor and three trades stacked on top of each other, so a defect you write up tomorrow morning is already behind the programme. Capture it at the wall, assign it in two taps, and close it before the next trade moves in.
4 min
A two-colour risograph poster of a gloved hand marking a defect on a wall in a bare commercial fit-out
2026.07.27
Playbook
200 dwellings, one defect list: handover for developers
On a 200-dwelling tower no single defect is hard. What kills the handover is the lists splitting: the super, the subs, the client rep, and the certifier each keeping their own. One list keyed by location is what stops it becoming a spreadsheet swamp.
5 min
A two-colour risograph poster of a multi-storey apartment tower with a single unit flagged in orange
2026.07.22
Playbook
Residential builders: making handover the boring day it should be
Handover goes bad the moment the owners find the benchtop scratch before you closed it. One owned defect list, captured with photos at the PCI and verified closed before the client walks, is what keeps the day uneventful.
4 min
A two-colour risograph poster of a hand holding out house keys with a house-shaped keyring at handover
2026.07.20
Field notes
A defect you cannot find is one you pay for twice
A hairline crack in unit 1207, disputed at practical completion, and nobody could prove who found it or when. The tile is cheap to replace. The argument is not, and the record is the only thing that ends it.
4 min
A two-colour risograph poster of a hand pointing at a hairline crack running across a wall
2026.07.18
Product
The correspondence that decides who pays
A delay notice is only worth what you can produce eleven months later, when the claim lands and it is still sitting in someone's inbox. Project correspondence puts the delays, variations and claims on the record, threaded at project level, with the other side replying by email magic-link and no login.
4 min
A two-colour risograph poster of a vertical stack of layered rectangular message plates threaded onto one connecting spine, the top plate and the spine picked out in orange
2026.07.15
Guide
What IssuesId does on a live site, minus the sales pitch
No feature tour. Just what the product actually does across one job, in order: catch an issue with photo evidence, assign it in two taps, work with no signal, track it to closed, and hand over a report that holds up. Plus what it does not do.
5 min
A two-colour risograph poster of a hand holding a phone that is photographing a building, the camera app on screen
2026.07.13
Field notes
Your defect list is in three WhatsApp groups and nobody owns it
Most teams track defects across a group chat, a camera roll and a spreadsheet, and it fails for one reason: nobody owns the single list. Here is what one owned register actually looks like.
6 min
A two-colour risograph poster of a gloved hand holding a phone crowded with site photos and chat messages
2026.07.08
Guide
Snagging vs defect management: what site teams actually need
Two words that get used for the same clipboard. They are not the same job, and the difference shows up the morning someone disputes a defect and you go looking for the record.
6 min
A two-colour risograph poster of a gloved hand working a filling knife along a wall edge, making good a defect
2026.06.08
Announcement
EOFY deal: cut costs before the financial year ticks over
$29 per project and $5 per dwelling per month, the lowest we run all year. Priced by area and dwelling, not by seat. Valid until 10 July.
3 min
A two-colour risograph poster of a worker in a hard hat reading site blueprints
2026.05.25
Field notes
Why offline-first is the only honest promise in site software
Signal dies in basements, and that is exactly where the defects are. So the phone is the source of truth until it syncs, and sync is something you never think about.
6 min
A two-colour risograph poster of two hi-vis workers seen from above, looking at a tablet together on site
2026.05.07
Playbook
The anatomy of a compliance-ready defect report
What goes into a handover report that stands up to certifier scrutiny? Five sections, one audit trail, zero spreadsheets.
9 min
A two-colour risograph poster of a hard hat beside a floor plan and a report on a clipboard, the report text shown as bold redaction bars
2026.04.18
Product
Trade assignment: the two-tap standard
We rebuilt assignment around one question: what would a site supervisor do if they had 90 seconds between tasks?
4 min
A two-colour risograph poster of a hi-vis worker's hands using a smartphone on site
2026.03.30
Engineering
Photo metadata as evidence
Capture time, a named location, an untouched original. What it takes to stop a defect photo being waved off as taken anywhere, anytime, by anyone, and why the GPS pin is the weakest fact on it.
7 min
A two-colour risograph poster of a gloved hand examining a crack on a wall
IssuesId