The day a building reaches substantial completion, a clock starts running. For the next twelve months, most construction defects are typically the contractor’s responsibility to correct at no cost to the owner. That coverage is one of the most valuable provisions in the construction contract, and at many institutions it goes largely unclaimed.
The reason is structural rather than negligent. At turnover, the project team disbands. The owner’s project manager moves to the next capital effort, the architect closes the file, and the building passes to facilities staff who were rarely part of construction and may never have seen the contract. When a heat pump short-cycles in February or a roof detail leaks in an August storm, the failure gets absorbed into the maintenance backlog alongside everything else the department handles. Many may not connect it to the warranty, document it, or press the claim. The contractor, reasonably enough, fixes what gets reported.
The financial exposure is real. A mid-sized clinical building can carry dozens of latent defects into occupancy: control sequences that drift out of calibration, flashing details that fail under wind-driven rain, valves that seize, finishes that delaminate under actual traffic. Individually these are small items. Collectively they can represent hundreds of thousands of dollars in corrective work that either the contractor absorbs during the warranty period or the institution absorbs forever after it.
Operations reveal what commissioning may not. Commissioning tests systems under controlled conditions over a compressed schedule, often before the building carries a full load. It cannot replicate a complete cooling season, a complete heating season, or a facility operating at census with real occupants, real equipment heat, and real door traffic. The first summer and the first winter are the true functional tests, and their findings arrive over twelve months, not two weeks. A warranty program is how the institution captures those findings while someone else is still obligated to pay for them.
The fix is an assignment, and it should happen at turnover, in writing. Name a warranty manager. The role can sit with a facilities lead, with the owner’s project manager on a retained basis, or with a designated plant engineer. What matters is that one person holds it explicitly, because a responsibility held by everyone is held by no one. Give that person three duties. First, log every failure as it occurs, with dates, locations, and photographs, regardless of whether it seems warranty-related in the moment. Second, route claims to the contractor in writing through the notice procedure the contract specifies, since informal phone calls create no record and no obligation. Third, track each item to verified resolution rather than to a service visit, because a technician who resets a fault has not necessarily corrected its cause.
Then put one date on the calendar before the project team walks away: an eleventh-month walkthrough, attended by facilities staff, the contractor, and the design team, held while coverage is still in force. Walk the building floor by floor, review the log, interview the people who operate the systems daily, and convert open observations into formal claims while they still have standing. Contractors take this meeting seriously when it is scheduled early, because they know it is coming and plan their closeout accordingly.
None of this requires new money or new software. It requires a name, a log, and a date. The warranty is an asset the institution has already paid for through the construction contract. Collecting it takes an owner.