Practical completion (PCI) inspection software
A practical completion inspection is done for the owner of a new home in the days before the final progress payment, while the builder still has a reason to fix things. The deliverable is a defect list the builder will accept: each item located, photographed and measured against a published tolerance rather than an opinion. SurveyThanks captures defects room by room and renders the list in the order the builder’s supervisor will walk it.
Built for homeowners running teams of roughly 3–50 inspectors.
Sample PCI defect report
An illustrative excerpt. The site, readings and findings are fictional; the layout is yours to set.
PCI defect report
PCI defect schedule — Lot 212, Fictional Estate
- Inspection
- Practical completion, prior to handover
- Date
- 27 August 2026
- Defects recorded
- 41
| Ref · location | Defect | Tolerance reference |
|---|---|---|
| D07 · Kitchen | Benchtop join misaligned, 1.5 mm lip | Tolerance reference: Outside |
| D12 · Garage | Slab crack, 0.5 mm, no displacement | Tolerance reference: Within |
| D19 · Bed 3 | Paint run on architrave at door head | Tolerance reference: Outside |
| D23 · Alfresco | Missing silicone at window sill | Tolerance reference: Incomplete |
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 PCI defect report where your template puts it.
Per room
- Room
- Room photo
- Defects present (Y / N)
Per defect
- Defect reference number
- Linked room
- Trade (painter, tiler, carpenter …)
- Measured value (mm)
- Within / outside tolerance / incomplete
- Photo with comment
Handover
- Builder’s representative present
- Appliances operated
- Keys and manuals supplied
Standards the report works to
- Guide to Standards and TolerancesPublished by state regulators (e.g. Victorian Building Authority, NSW Fair Trading)
- The tolerances each defect is measured against when deciding whether it is a defect at all.
- Home Building Act 1989 (NSW)Statutory warranties
- The statutory warranties that continue to apply after handover, cited when advising owners on unresolved items.
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 PCI defect report gets built
Capture it once, offline
Your firm builds the new-build handover inspection 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 PCI defect 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 PCI defect 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 the defect list be sorted by trade for the builder?
- Each defect carries its trade, and your template can loop over defects grouped by trade, so the supervisor gets a list per subcontractor.
- Can we do the re-inspection on the same list?
- Yes. A follow-up job can reuse the defect rows, so the re-inspection records each item as rectified or outstanding instead of starting again.
- Can calculated fields count the defects for the summary?
- Calculated fields can count and sum across a repeat, so the totals by trade or by status in the summary come from the data rather than a hand count.
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
- Owner-builder defect inspectionsDefect schedule
- Pre-auction inspectionsCondition summary report
- Pre-purchase building inspectionsBuilding inspection report
- Pre-settlement inspectionsSettlement checklist report
- Property photography ordersPhoto floorplan package
- Rental entry condition reportsEntry condition report
- Rental exit and bond inspectionsExit condition report
- Residential dilapidation surveysDilapidation report
Other disciplines
Rebuild your PCI defect 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.