Construction progress reporting vs a snagging inspection

A snagging visit lists defects in a finished property, once, shortly before handover. Progress reporting checks what has actually been built against your contract, repeatedly, while construction is still underway. They answer different questions, and the second stops being answerable the moment the building is covered up and paid for.

The difference in one table

	Snagging at handover	Progress reporting
When	Once, at the end	Through the build, at your interval
Compared against	Building standards and the specification	Your contract and your payment schedule
What it produces	A list of defects to be fixed	What is built, what is paid, and the gap between them
What you can still do	Ask for repairs	Decide whether the next instalment is due
Covers hidden work	No, it is already covered up	Yes, if the visit happens before it is

Why the timing is the whole argument

By the time a snagging list exists, the structure is finished, the services are inside the walls, and you have paid most of the price. Every item on that list is a request. The developer may honour it, and in a well-run project they usually do, but you are asking rather than requiring.

During construction the same facts have force. An instalment that has not been earned is not yet owed, and that is a materially different conversation from a repair request after acceptance.

Reporting and snagging are not substitutes

This is worth saying plainly, because the comparison usually gets made as though one replaces the other. It does not. A snagging visit is the right thing to commission before you sign an acceptance document, and nothing about reporting during the build removes the need for it.

What reporting does is cover the period a snagging visit structurally cannot: everything between the first payment and the last, when the decisions that cost money are still being made.

Which one you need, by situation

Your situation	What helps
Just signed, first instalments due	Reporting. The gap opens here.
Halfway through, invoices arriving	Reporting, timed to the invoices.
Handover in a few weeks	One report before you accept, plus a snagging visit.
Already accepted, defects appearing	Neither. Look at your defect liability period.

Who does which

We do not sell snagging. It is done by a local firm you engage; what we sell is the visit during construction and the report that comes out of it — see pricing.

Snagging checks the finish once, at the end; progress reporting checks the building against your contract throughout, while an unearned instalment can still be questioned. Run both — reporting through the build and a snagging visit before you accept — and each covers what the other structurally cannot.