Strata building defect report software
An apartment defect survey is commissioned by an owners corporation that suspects the building has problems and wants to hold the builder to its statutory warranties before time runs out. Lawyers read the report. It has to cover hundreds of lots and common areas consistently, and each defect needs a location, an extent, a probable cause and the warranty it falls under. SurveyThanks treats lots, levels and defects as linked data, so one defect type found in forty units is one finding with forty locations.
Built for strata lawyers running teams of roughly 3–50 inspectors.
Sample Defect evidence report
An illustrative excerpt. The site, readings and findings are fictional; the layout is yours to set.
Defect evidence report
Defect D-14 — Balcony waterproofing failure
- Building
- Fictional Apartments, 96 lots
- Survey period
- 2–6 March 2026
- Lots inspected
- 61 of 96
| Lot / location | Observation | Severity |
|---|---|---|
| Lot 204 balcony | Efflorescence and tile debonding at the threshold | Severity: Serious |
| Lot 305 balcony | Water staining to ceiling of Lot 205 below | Severity: Serious |
| Lot 406 balcony | Hollow tiles, no staining below | Severity: Minor |
| Lot 507 balcony | No visible defect | Severity: None |
Fields captured on site
Your firm builds the form in-app, so these are a starting point rather than a fixed schema. Every field is captured on the device, with or without signal, and lands in the defect evidence report where your template puts it.
Building register
- Levels
- Lots per level
- Common property areas
Per defect type
- Defect title
- Building element
- Probable cause
- Major / serious / minor classification
Per occurrence
- Linked lot or common area
- Linked defect type
- Extent
- Photo with comment
- Access granted (Y / N)
Standards the report works to
- Home Building Act 1989 (NSW)Statutory warranties
- Sets the warranty periods — six years for major defects, two years for other defects — the report’s classifications serve.
- Design and Building Practitioners Act 2020 (NSW)Duty of care and design compliance
- Relevant where the owners corporation pursues designers and practitioners as well as the builder.
Load the standards you hold into your reference library and the drafted prose is written against them rather than against a general model.
How the defect evidence report gets built
Capture it once, offline
Your firm builds the apartment defect survey form in-app — 25 field types, nesting repeatable groups, compound AND/OR visibility rules, reusable modules and calculated fields. Field capture works with no signal: jobs, forms, photos, notes and audio all queue in an idempotent outbox that only clears once the server confirms receipt.
Link it to your rooms and external areas
Enter rooms and external areas once, as a register. Every one of your defects, photos and timber pest findings then points at a stored row rather than a name somebody typed — and the links survive a disconnected device.
Render your own template
The defect evidence report renders into the Word template you already use — your letterhead, your section order, your clause library — with conditionals, loops over repeats, composable sub-templates and photo grids.
Reviewed before it leaves
You write the review framework: a checklist of what a defect evidence report must contain, plus the prose standards you would mark a junior against. Link it to a report template and it runs every time that template renders. Each finding comes back graded info, minor or major, quoting the sentence at fault, and a person accepts or dismisses every one.
Because the structured submission behind the report is held too, the review is a comparison rather than a proofread: The summary says no major defects were found; the form carries a major structural defect on the rear wall.
Checks a residential property framework usually carries
- The standard’s required wording, limitations and exclusions are all present
- Every area is either reported on or listed as not accessed, with a reason
- Each defect in the summary appears in the body at the same severity
- Timber pest findings carry the risk statement the standard requires
Questions
- Can one defect be linked to many lots?
- Yes. Defect types and lots are separate registers linked many-to-many, so the report can present each defect once with every location it occurs in, and each lot’s list of defects.
- Can several inspectors survey the building at the same time?
- Yes. Each inspector works the same job on their own device, offline in basements and stairwells, and their records merge into one data set.
- Will the classifications line up with the legal advice?
- The classifications are your form’s options, so you set them to match your solicitor’s instructions, and the review step checks the narrative uses them consistently.
What this is not
Worth knowing before you book a demo, so neither of us wastes the half hour.
- Not field-service dispatch. No timesheets, no parts, no inventory. Scheduling exists to get an inspector to a site.
- No signature capture. If your deliverable has to carry a signed sign-off on the artefact itself, this is not the tool yet.
- Field capture is what works offline — jobs, forms, photos, notes and audio. Reports, chat, scheduling and the inbox need a connection.
- No client portal. Reports go out as a file or a password-protected link.
Other residential property work we cover
- Property photography ordersPhoto floorplan package
- Rental entry condition reportsEntry condition report
- Rental exit and bond inspectionsExit condition report
- Residential dilapidation surveysDilapidation report
- Retaining wall assessmentsWall condition report
- Routine rental inspectionsRoutine inspection report
- Senior home safety auditsFalls risk audit
- Short-stay property auditsListing readiness report
Other disciplines
Rebuild your defect evidence report in SurveyThanks
Bring the Word template you already send clients. If you are coming off another field-forms tool, a filled report can be uploaded, read field by field, and re-rendered into your template.