On supervision: what weekly site visits catch

Site supervision is the least glamorous service I offer and the one I would never let a client skip. A construction site makes hundreds of small decisions a week. Most are made correctly. The ones that are not tend to get buried, literally, by Friday.

What a weekly visit catches is rarely dramatic. A window opening framed 12 centimeters low. Insulation stopped short around an outlet box. A drain slope that reads fine to the eye and wrong to a level. Each one is an hour to fix that week and a demolition later.

The visit also protects the contractor. When the architect signs off stage by stage, the builder is not carrying silent liability for interpretations of a drawing. Good contractors prefer working supervised. That preference is one of my better filters.

I keep a decision log for every site: dated, photographed, boring. At handover it becomes the honest history of the building. Ten years later, when someone asks what is inside that wall, there is an answer.