THE UK SNAGGING PROCESS – A BENCHMARK FOR RESIDENTIAL CONSTRUCTION Funmilayo Ebun Rotimi a , John Tookey b and James Olabode Rotimi c Construction Management Programme, School of Engineering, Auckland University of Technology, Auckland, New Zealand E-mail: a frotim@aut.ac.nz, b jtookey@aut.ac.nz, c jrotimi@aut.ac.nz The residential construction sector is under pressure to meet an ever increasing customer expec- tation of quality improvement on their development projects. But not all completed residential projects turn out on a clean slate and these have become a source of concern to homeowners and approving authorities. Recent study provides evidence that a significant percentage of new homeowners call back their developers to rectify snags and latent defects. Therefore this paper is undertaken to provide a benchmark for the implementation of a snagging process similar to the UK for the residential sector in New Zealand. The methodology adopted is a meta- study of published literature relating to snagging practice in the UK. This is compared with existing building inspection practice in New Zealand and improvement areas systematically identified. It is hoped that the study would benefit the entire construction industry by serving as improvements to quality performance in residential construction in New Zealand. Keywords: Benchmarking, UK, New Zealand, Residential construction sector, Snagging process. 1. Introduction The construction industry is an impor- tant bellwether and stimulus for the New Zealand economy, as it contributes about 5% of total Gross Domestic Products (GDP) (Alan et al., 2008). The sector has significant social and economic relevance, since it generates employment, induces development in other economic sectors through the multiple effects of invest- ment in buildings (Pedro et al., 2008). The residential housing sector is one of three distinct sub-systems in the New Zealand construction industry. In a typi- cal year, residential housing construction accounts for approximately 24,000 new builds and 32,000 renovations to existing homes (Building and Construction Sector Productivity Taskforce, 2009). This places residential housing centrally in any econ- omy and an important sector in every national development plan. The relevance of the residential housing sector therefore means that any performance improvement of the sector will translate to benefits to the general economy. Therefore the current paper focuses on the need to reduce snags and latent defects in residential buildings as a way of improving quality performance of building developers and in consequence productivity of the sector. There is little doubt that proper quality management sys- tems within construction organisations and their productivity are positively related (Page, 2010). ‘Snags’ and ‘snagging’ is gradually becoming terms used in construction envi- ronments outside the UK construction industry which was the origin of this termi- nology. Snagging items are quality failure items that are identified near the comple- tion stage of a construction project by an individual who could be termed as ‘the snag identifier’, while the process of iden- tifying and rectifying these quality failures is known as snagging or building inspec- tion (Sommerville et al., 2004). Snagging describes the process of checking for faults or defects in a property and correcting them before the property is handed over to a new owner. ‘Snagging’ problems in this context are items of work that still require Research, Development, and Practice in Structural Engineering and Construction Edited by Vanissorn Vimonsatit, Amarjit Singh, and Siamak Yazdani Copyright c  2013 by Research Publishing Services :: www.rpsonline.com.sg ISBN: 978-981-08-7920-4 :: doi: 10.3850/978-981-08-7920-4 Q-4-0330 1015