Quality Benchmark Report (QBR)

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Valuable feedback from the very start of a project

Produced for each Key Stage Inspection and where required, any additional Risk Based Inspection stages, this report will provide photos and commentary, a score of 1-6 and will highlight good practice and defects.

Our Building Inspectors will benchmark the first available Key Stage Inspection on a new site*. They will score the site using our six-point Quality Common Scoring scale and will then email the report directly to the site manager and upload a copy to the My NHBC Portal.

Compliant work and good practice will be highlighted within the Quality Benchmark Report (QBR) with photos and a description. If all work is found to be compliant, the report will be scored 4, 5 or 6 where a 5 or a 6 denote work that is very good or of outstanding quality. If non-compliant work is found, this will be recorded in the initial QBR with supporting photos and descriptors and a report score of 1, 2 or 3 will be given, depending on the issues found.

* We don't benchmark houses on sites with fewer than five plots or where there is only one block on site.

a burgundy banner with a white 1 showing the first part of the scoring matrix

1 - Very poor

Many significant non-compliances of NHBC Standards and/or Building Regulations - danger to health and safety and almost inevitably resulting in a claim

a pink banner with a white 2 showing the second part of the scoring matrix

2 - Poor

Many minor non-compliances of NHBC Standards and/or Building Regulations and/or some significant non-compliance. Imminent danger to health and safety

an orange banner with a white 3 showing the third part of the scoring matrix

3 - Requires improvement

Some minor non-compliance with Standards and/or Building Regulations

a blue banner with a white 4 showing the fourth part of the scoring matrix

4 - Good

Meets NHBC Standards and Building Regulations

a green banner with a white 5 showing the fifth part of the scoring matrix

5 - Very good

In addition to 4 some extra attention to detail over and above requirements

a green banner with a white 6 showing the sixth part of the scoring matrix

6 - Outstanding

In addition to 4 much of work seen cannot be improved upon

We work together with you, on a bespoke site-by-site basis, from pre-construction to post-completion to help you identify and manage the technical risks on your sites. Below, we explain some of the key tools we use to support you.

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Bespoke Technical Risk Management Plan

This document records the bespoke approach we will take to mitigate the risks of defects and improve quality across the site. It will highlight risks that might require extra inspections, extra meetings and/or ‘moments in time’ (photographic evidence).

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Joint Virtual Meetings

These are meetings between the site manager, members of the builder’s technical team and our technical specialists. The attendees and frequency of meetings will vary depending on the complexity of the site.

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Quality Common Scoring

Applied to all Key Stage and Risk Based inspections, this is the same scoring we use for Pride in the Job and Construction Quality Reviews. Scores are 1-6 where 4 indicates compliance with NHBC Standards, 1 is very poor and 6 is outstanding work.