Since 2016 we have kept a ledger of everything that fails in our buildings — not to assign blame, but because the next project can be better for it. It now has over four hundred entries.
The lessons are not glamorous. Most failures are water and most water failures are junctions where two trades met and neither felt responsible. We now draw those junctions ourselves, at 1:5, on every project, and the failures have dropped by roughly half.
The ledger is reviewed every Monday. It is the only meeting that has never been cancelled.