A defect register template — and when to stop using it.

What each column is for

Templates never explain their columns, which is why people download one and then search again. These are the twenty-one, in file order, each with the reason it exists. Most of them exist because of an argument somebody lost.

01No.

A permanent number, assigned once and never reused. It must not encode anything that can change: not the trade, not the level, not the status. If renumbering is ever needed, it was a label, not an identifier.

02Building

The first of four location columns. Keep the location structured so a filter for one level returns that level; “L3 bathroom” in a single text cell cannot be filtered, sorted or handed over.

03Level

Second location column. A number or a name, spelled one way, from a list you agreed on day one.

04Unit / area

Third location column: the apartment, tenancy, gridline or zone. On a house it is the plot; on a warehouse it is the aisle.

05Room

Fourth location column. Ensuite, not “bathroom”; Bedroom 2, not “bed”. The person reading it in November was not on the walk.

06Description

Written for a stranger. “Crack” is useless. “Hairline crack, 300 mm, running from the window reveal down the east wall” is a record. Include the extent and what you think the cause is, marked as a guess if it is one.

07Type

What kind of record this is: Defect, Incomplete works, Warranty, Variation, Safety or Maintenance. Collapse these into one bucket and your defect count at handover is fiction, because a third of it was never defective.

08Classification

Your own taxonomy of trade and failure: “Waterproofing – membrane”, “Carpentry – door hardware”. It is the column the register sorts and filters on all job long, so agree the list up front and do not let it grow by typo.

09Raised by

The person who reported it, not the person who typed it in. A tenant’s complaint attributed to the site admin is a broken link the day the tenant disputes what they said.

10Raised on

The date it was logged. Not the date of the walk it was found on if that was different; note that in the description.

11Photo

The filename or link of the photo taken at the moment of capture. If the photo lives in a folder, the name in this cell is the only thing tying it to the row, so never rename the file.

12Assigned to

The trade or contractor doing the work. One name, spelled the way it appears on their invoices.

13Cost to

Who wears the cost: Defect, Variation or Backcharge. Most of the time it matches the assignee. The times it does not are exactly the rows that turn into money arguments, and a note in the margin will not carry them.

14Due

The fix-by date. Set it from the contract or the project’s standard window, not from optimism.

15Work started

The date the row first left Open. Set it once and never edit it, so time-in-progress is a real measure rather than “how long since somebody typed this in”.

16Status

Open, Assigned, In progress, Fixed – awaiting inspection, Closed, In dispute or Outstanding. Each status needs a named owner who is allowed to move it; the one that matters is that the trade cannot move a row to Closed.

17Fixed on

The date the trade said it was done. It is their claim, and it is only worth recording alongside the next column.

18Proof photo

A photo of the finished work. Make the rule that a row cannot be marked Fixed without one. It removes the most common dispute on any site, which is not “was it fixed” but “was it ever looked at”.

19Verified by

The person who looked at the fix and accepted it, who must not be the trade that did the work. This column is the whole reason the register is worth keeping.

20Closed on

The date it was verified. Once closed, a row stays closed; a recurrence is a new row that references this one.

21Notes

Anything that does not fit. Never a substitute for the columns: if you find yourself writing the location or the status in here, the register has already started to rot.

Three rows from one site walk

Tuesday 21 April, Block A, level three, the site manager and the employer’s agent walking apartment 3.07 and the landing outside it. Three things get written down. Here is how each one lands in the register, and what would have gone wrong with a thinner version.

214, the shower hob. The description gives the extent (600 mm), the symptom (water tracking under the hob) and a guess at the cause, marked as a guess. Type is Defect, classification is Waterproofing – membrane, so the row routes to the waterproofer and not the tiler who will be blamed for it. The trade marked it fixed on the 23rd with a proof photo, and it sits at Fixed – awaiting inspection because nobody from the builder’s side has looked at it yet. The note says hold the tiler, which is the decision the row exists to support.

215, the door. A small one, and the kind that gets ticked without being looked at. It is Closed because S. Okonkwo verified it on the 23rd, a day after the joiner’s claim, and her name is in the Verified by column. The trade’s date and the verifier’s date are different people on different days, which is what a closed row is supposed to look like.

216, the handrail bracket. Raised by the employer’s agent, not the site manager, so that is who is in Raised by. The bracket was never on the drawing, so it is Incomplete works with the cost to Variation, not a defect against the metalworker. Put it in the same bucket as the other two and your handover defect count is wrong by a third, and the metalworker has a fair complaint. It is Assigned with a due date a week out, and Work started is blank because it has not.

Where the spreadsheet breaks

A spreadsheet register is fine for one person, one building, and a short job. It fails at predictable points, and the failures are not about discipline. They are about what a spreadsheet cannot do, and it is worth knowing which week to expect each one.

Keep the columns. Change what holds them.

The columns above are the register. Whatever holds them, a sheet or a system, should be judged on whether it keeps them honest: one copy, the photo attached to the row rather than named in it, every change stamped with who and when, and a Closed that only the right people can set. If you have not hit the three failures yet, the sheet is fine and this page has done its job. Set the evidence rules and the status owners now, while the register is small; how to set up a defect register that survives handover is the hour’s work that makes the difference.

If you have hit them, the guide to construction defect management software goes through what a system has to do with the same columns, with an example export, and the docs explain how IssuesId handles the lifecycle, structured locations, photos that stay attached and who can close what. There is no pitch in this paragraph on purpose. Come back when the sheet breaks.