Post-handover housing defects: sources and origins

In Spain, the high levels of inexperienced workers and the long chains of subcontracting contribute to poor quality of dwellings. Although the Ley reguladora de la subcontratación en el Sector de la Construcción (Subcontracting law) has established quality measures, the number of customer complaints is still increasing. In this paper, a total of 2351 post-handover defects derived from four Spanish builders and seven residential developments are classified according to their source and origin. The research reveals that the most common defects identified by customers at post-handover were derived from bad workmanship, and were related to construction errors and omissions. Typical defects were found to include incorrect installation, appearance defects, missing item or task mainly related to finishing and considered to be minor. No defects were caused by poor design as they are mainly detected and resolved during construction, or become apparent after some years of use. This study demonstrates the negative impact of re-doing defective work during the final stages of construction, and provides knowledge to define measures to improve the