Welcome to Home Building Like a Boss, the podcast dedicated to helping first home buyers in Perth build their dream home with ease and excitement. I’m Jamie, your host and go to building broker. Are you ready to feel empowered, in control, and excited about your building journey? I’ll help guide you with expert advice, insider tips and tricks, and real life stories.

Stories to help you navigate the confusing world of home building. Tune in as I take you on the journey to building your home, like a boss. Hello,

and welcome back to another episode of the podcast. I’m your host, Jamie, as always. And this week I am going to be chatting to you about what is practical completion inspection. In other words, in the building lingo, PCI, PCI is the last stage of your construction journey, right before you get the keys. The reason I am bringing this on the podcast today is because I went to PCI with my sister in law this morning and helped her do a walkthrough and go through the process.

So I’m here now passing on that information to you about how it all works, what is PCI, as it is a very, very important step in the last stage of your construction journey before you get the keys. So what is practical completion? It generally means your house is at the point where all the building work has been completed as per your building contract, and it is reasonably fit for occupation.

So there will be defects and little things around the house that will be unfinished or need to be picked up and touched up. And that is It’s 100% normal for your home, painting defects, scratches on the door frames, chips, things like that that need to be picked up. And that is what that process is for. So you will walk through the home with your site supervisor.

And go through the external and then room by room of your internals to check that everything is working. Now, things that you need to check and look out for. On your external, you want to be looking at your brickwork, checking your mortar. Are there any gaps that are too big? Is there any chips in the render?

In the paint, are your downpipes painted? Are your downpipes in? Are your external taps in? All those sorts of things you want to make sure you’re checking. So. It is awesome to, one, bring your most recent and up to date house plan, so you can cross check everything with it. You take measure phone charger to check that your PowerPoints and electrical is working along with your phone torches.

So you can use your torch and take photos of anything that you want to keep record of. Now, when you’re going internal room by room, you’re checking the most super important things. of obviously your water, does the hot water work, do your toilets flush, is your gas cooktop working and your oven. Then your other minor defects are your cosmetic defects of your painting, your chips in the wall, that kind of thing.

Your benchtop’s okay, your cupboard drawers. Blinds working. You’re basically just kind of walking through the home to check that you’re happy with everything and then you want to raise these points to your site supervisor if anything needs to be fixed and this is your opportunity to chat to them and you do need to make sure you take your time and pick up anything that you want to be fixed or that you need to have a question on.

Great thing your site supervisor should have it with you but bring masking tape and anything that you want fixed as you walk around. Tear a bit of masking tape off and put it on the walls or anywhere that anything needs to be fixed. Check your ceilings, are your lights working, your switches working, everything in the home.

This roughly takes an hour to an hour and a half, two hours, depending how long you go through. And obviously depends on the size of your home, how many different rooms that you have, all those kinds of things as well. So practical completion is. Very, very important stage of the process. Now, from practical completion, it can take two to three weeks for your builder then to go rectify everything and get trades back to fix anything that you’ve picked up.

During that two to three week process. You’re also sorting out your final progress payment with the bank and your builder, and they’re coming around to do a valuation, check the house, and then once the bank’s happy and you’ve signed off, they release the final payment to the builder, while the builder is fixing those things and rectifying those things.

Then a few weeks later, one to two weeks, it depends how many things you’ve picked up, what needs to be fixed, how long it’s taking for trades to come back. Then you’ll have handover for your keys and you’ll walk through again on your second practical completion essentially, which you’ll walk through with your site supervisor, which can take 15 to.

30 minutes going over all the defects that you picked up from your first PCI meeting and making sure that everything has been rectified. And if anything has not needs to be recorded down, but most things pretty much should have been fixed unless. They have someone coming back the next day or whatever, you can get your keys today and that next trade will come back the following day just so you can get your keys in time.

And here are some tips to help you prepare for practical completion. So make sure your phone’s charged. You can use your phone light to check inside cupboards, roof spaces, and dark areas when necessary. Use colored pens to identify certain tasks or areas. For example, use a red pen to mark out major issues and blue to check your PowerPoints, yellow for your downlights and green for general notes, take photos of any areas of concern and use the colored sticker or masking tape to mark the area and then have those photos saved to cross reference when you go back for your second PCI meeting, you can easily pull up your phone and be like, Oh yeah, cool.

I took a photo of that wall there. It had a mark in it. It’s been patched, painted, whatever. It can also be very handy to have a checklist there with you. So the supervisor is obviously going to take you room by room, a checklist or a

notepad or something there for your reference that you can then go through and check room by room and make your own notes. For PCI, Maddie and I have just created a checklist for our clients for PCI that our clients can print off this checklist or use it on their phone to go through and walk room by room.

It’s about 25 pages long. It’s quite extensive, but it’s good to be thorough and pick these things up. And if you’re not sure you ask your site supervisor about it and they will chat to you. Having that checklist there. gives you peace of mind that you’re not going to miss anything. Now, some of the things in the checklist might not be applicable to you.

Obviously, let’s say like a theater area. If you don’t have a theater, it’s not applicable to you, but you can use that checklist to go through room by room as a guide, tick things off and make notes to get the best result out of your PCI inspection. Now for my clients, this checklist is Free included as you’re coming up to PCI, you’ll get sent this checklist to help you prepare for non clients.

I’m actually going to add this as a downloadable, which will be 49 to purchase and you can purchase it. And you can also use that checklist as you go through your home. For PCI, so I did in the show notes below the website and the payment link that you can purchase this PCI Checklist it gives you in detail.

What is PCI? handy tips Anything you need to go over what to bring on the day and it also explains how to best use the checklist So you get the best result out of it once you have gone through PCI and you finish with your site supervisor They will do up a report that then goes back to the admin team listing out all the defects that report Then you will have on your second PCI Going over everything that has been rectified or they’re waiting on things.

It really just depends on Supplies trades when they can get things back like today. We did PCI without the door on, but it’s getting installed over the next two weeks. And then when she gets the keys, we just check the roller doors going up and down. Everything’s working, things like that. And same as when you pick up your keys, the other thing to check is when you go through your house is do all the keys work, the sliding doors, the windows, the deadbolt.

You want to make sure that is working. That’s something obviously can’t check a PCI, but you do want to check that at key handover and make sure all the keys are working has happened before that the keys don’t work. So it’s important in some of the locks, you want to make sure all the keys working, otherwise builder needs to know about it to get those keys fixed.

I think the most important things about PCI is one, it is so exciting because you’re so close to getting your keys. You’ve gone in the house. You probably haven’t been in the house since lockup. So you’re super excited, but you want to just make sure you take your time, talk to your site supervisor, go room by room, go back over anything.

If you need to have your phone charger, tape measure, masking tape with you and your checklist. Your pens and everything like that to go through and check everything’s working. Your lights are on your downlights, your taps on your external, your air con, your gas, your power, your meter box, all those things you want to make sure are working.

Then you obviously have your maintenance period with your builder. Now some builders a six month maintenance period. Some builders a 12 month maintenance period. When you do handover and you get your keys. Everything major should be fixed. Everything should be all good, but most likely, and that’s what the maintenance period is there for, as you are living in your home and you’ll notice, Oh yeah, there’s a chip here, a crack here, or something needs to be fixed here.

Take photos of that and record it down in your notes. So then when it gets to that six or that 12 month mark, you’ve got notes recorded already on what you need to fill out your maintenance report. So the builder can come back and get those items fixed for you. If you just, Oh yeah, take a mental note of it, you’ll get to six or 12 months and you won’t remember what needs to be fixed or rectified.

So that’s just a super handy tip for your maintenance process after you get your keys. If you have any questions about PCI, let me know. I will have the checklist downloadable in the show notes below. Like I said, for my clients, that’s why I created it as a part of a service to provide them that support with going through the PCI process.

If you’re not a client, you can download it for 49. Just click the show notes below and I hope it helps. I would love to hear your feedback on how you think the checklist is going. Thank you.

Thank you so much for tuning in to the home building like a boss podcast. I hope you enjoyed today’s episode and learn something new. Remember you’ve got this and I’ve got your back until next time. Stay inspired, stay informed and stay confident. on your building journey. I can’t wait to chat with you on the next episode.

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