Construction Quality Checklist: What to Inspect While Your House Is Being Built

Most defects in a house are built in during a few hours: the morning a slab is poured, the week after when nobody waters it, the day the tiles go over a toilet floor that was never tested. You do not need to be an engineer to catch them. You need to know when to visit and what to look at.

This checklist follows the order of construction. Our article on house construction stages explains when each stage happens.

Before a slab or column is cast

1. Steel grade and paperwork. Steel should be Fe 500D (the D means more ductile, which matters in an earthquake) and carry the BIS mark. Ask for the mill test certificate for each lot. Bars should be free of loose rust and mud.

2. Bar sizes and spacing match the drawing. Count the bars in a few beams and columns and measure the stirrup spacing. Stirrups are closer together near the ends of beams and columns; that is deliberate. Our construction cost guide lists how much steel a typical frame needs per m², a quick check on whether bars have been left out.

3. Seismic detailing. Gurugram is in seismic zone IV. Stirrup ends must be bent to 135°, not 90°, so they do not open in an earthquake, as IS 13920 requires. Laps in column bars should be in the middle half of the column height, not at floor level.

4. Cover blocks under every bar. Concrete or mortar blocks hold the steel off the formwork so concrete wraps it. The structural drawing gives the cover; typically around 50 mm in footings, 40 mm in columns, 25 to 30 mm in beams and 20 to 25 mm in slabs. Steel lying on the shuttering will rust within years.

5. Formwork is tight and propped. Gaps let cement slurry escape and leave honeycombed concrete. Props should stand on firm ground or planks, not loose soil.

On the day of the pour

6. The right concrete. House structures are usually designed for M20 or M25. Ready-mix concrete comes with a delivery slip naming the grade; site-mixed concrete should be batched by measured boxes, not by shovel count.

7. Cube tests. Cubes are cast from the same concrete and crushed at 7 and 28 days. Ask for the results. A cube that fails at 28 days is the only early warning you will get about the slab above your head.

8. A vibrator on every pour. Concrete has to be vibrated to drive out air, especially in columns and around congested steel. No vibrator on site means no pour.

9. No water added at the end. Extra water makes concrete easier to place and weaker for ever. If it is too stiff to place, the mix needs changing, not the hose.

After the pour

10. Curing. Concrete should be kept wet for at least 7 days, and at least 10 days with PPC or blended cement in dry or hot weather, per IS 456. In a Gurugram May, a slab left dry for a weekend cracks. Ponding on slabs and wet hessian on columns both work.

11. Props stay long enough. Props under slabs spanning up to 4.5 m stay at least 7 days, props under beams up to 6 m at least 14 days, and longer for bigger spans.

Walls and plaster

12. Brickwork. Bricks soaked before laying, joints no thicker than about 10 mm and fully filled, walls checked with a plumb and a level, and the work cured for a week. Walls should be tied to columns, not just butted against them.

13. Plaster. About 12 mm thick inside and 15 to 20 mm outside, cured for a week, with mesh over every joint between brick and concrete to stop hairline cracks.

Before anything gets covered up

14. Pressure-test the pipes. Supply lines are filled and held under pressure before they are plastered over.

15. Pond-test the roof and toilets. After waterproofing, water stands for 24 to 48 hours. Any damp patch below means it is redone now, not after the tiles.

16. Photograph everything. Steel before every pour, conduits and pipes before plaster. It costs nothing, and it is how you find a pipe five years later.

How we report it

On our sites every one of these checks is logged with dated photos in our project app, so owners see the steel before the concrete covers it without having to be there. The checks are the same whether you build turnkey or with a labour contract.

Planning a house in Gurugram? See what it costs to build and how we work as a construction company in Gurgaon. For schools and community buildings, see our school buildings.