Can you check the quality and compliance of a contractor's work?

This is a frequent request from owners funding works they cannot supervise, and from buyers taking delivery of a new unit. Two distinct situations. Works entrusted to a contractor: the dispute arises from the gap between what has been paid and what has been built — actual quantities, material quality, items priced in the contract but missing, progress invoiced ahead of progress achieved. Delivery by a developer: the subject is conformity of the delivered unit with the contractual drawings, and the schedule of defects and poor finishes recorded at handover. What the assignment covers: 1. Review of the paperwork: contract, priced bill of works, drawings, permit, variations, interim payments already settled. 2. A site inspection, preferably contradictory, with the contractor or developer present. A finding made in the other party's presence is far harder to dismiss afterwards. 3. A documented record: time-stamped photographs, measurements, an item-by-item comparison of specified against executed. 4. A schedule of defects, ranked between finishing items, non-conformities and defects requiring rectification. 5. Costing of the rectification works at local market prices, item by item. 6. Where relevant, an opinion on the consistency between actual progress and sums already paid. What it does not cover: no destructive testing or material sampling without prior written agreement; no statutory opinion on structural safety, since a suspected structural pathology leads us to recommend a specialist study; no topographic survey or cadastral setting-out check, which belong to partner chartered land surveyors; and no construction management within an inspection assignment. Timing matters more than anything else. A finding made before handover, or before the final payment, leaves you real negotiating room. The same finding six months later, once everything is paid and the contractor has gone, leaves you a document. If you are following a build from abroad, the best use is a checkpoint at each payment milestone rather than a single inspection at the end.