The Building Record
A shared record with rules attached. It exists so a building gets fixed faster, and going to court becomes the exception, not the default.
The short version. The binding terms are in the Building Data and IP Charter, which every participant accepts on joining.
Reporting a defect should not be the first step to a writ.
Owners need to report defects and see them fixed. Developers and builders need to know that reporting a defect is not the first step towards a writ. Today the only way to get transparency is to create a record that doubles as an evidence file, so builders under-disclose, owners lawyer up, and the building loses months or years to posturing instead of repair.
That is not really a legal problem. It is a design problem. There has never been a shared record with rules attached, so everyone falls back on litigation, because that is the only leverage on offer.
Resolution infrastructure, not an evidence library.
A shared record with rules attached. Everything about it is built so the record's default use is fixing the building faster, and going to court is the fallback that means stepping outside the system.
What it does for each of you.
Your exposure was never the record
It is the absence of one. A complete, honest record is what protects you, not a thin one.
Nothing gets lost or buried
Nothing you report can be lost, buried or denied later. And the record is built to get the building fixed, not to build your court case.
You are off the hook for the paper trail
You stop being the one blamed for losing the paper trail.
The rules that make it safe.
Facts, not verdicts. Logging, triaging or fixing a defect is not an admission of fault and cannot be pleaded as one. You can act on a problem without it being treated as a confession.
Even-handed by design. No side gets privileged rights to extract, export or use the record as evidence. What one participant can do with it, any participant can do, within their role.
No weaponising, no hiding. It is a breach to cherry-pick the record to mislead an insurer or a court, or to withhold something you are meant to contribute. The same rules that stop a builder hiding things stop an owner weaponising them.
Facts before lawyers. Before anyone starts proceedings, they share the relevant record, talk it through for a set period, then mediate. A cooling-off step, built into the process, that puts the facts on the table before the lawyers.
It slows disputes down. It does not make them disappear.
We would not claim otherwise. Everyone keeps their right to go to court. What the record does is slow disputes down, channel them through the facts first, and make honest repair the easy path and litigation the hard one. That is the whole point.
This is the plain-language summary. The binding terms are set out in the Building Data and IP Charter and accepted by each participant on accession.