Make the next step owned

A review should leave actions that you or the current team can take first: the record to repair, the response to approve, the decision date and the person responsible. Optional further help, including Claim Preparation and Assembly where the findings justify it, is a separate choice, not a prerequisite for making the position useful.

Updated: 16 September 2026. By Jack Butler-Kettle, Quantity Surveyor & Claims Consultant.

Why it matters

A review that ends in findings without actions is filed and forgotten. The team reads that the records are thin, the labour rate is unsourced and the response is due in three weeks, and nobody knows who is doing what by when, so the next meeting starts from the same place. Useful reviews end in a short list of things the existing team can do now, each with a name and a date, so that the position improves whether or not anyone is engaged further. Further help is a separate decision: if the review only makes sense as a route to more work, it is a sales document, not a review.

How to do it

End the review with a list of actions the current team can take with what they already have.
Give each action an owner by name, a date and the record or document it produces.
Put the decision date the client faces at the top of the list, with what has to be true by then.
List any further help as a separate option, with what it would add and what it would cost the team in time.
Follow up on the dates, not on whether the further help has been taken.

Example

The situation

A subcontractor commissions a stress test of its £95,000 loss and expense claim before serving it. The review finds two unsourced rates, a period with no allocation sheets and a response deadline in five weeks.

What happens

The review lists four actions: source the two rates from payroll, search the site office for the missing allocation sheets, correct the build-up, and approve the revised claim.
Each action is given to a named person with a date, the last of them ten days before the deadline.
The option of the reviewer preparing the revised claim is listed separately, with the time it would save, as a choice for the director.

The outcome

The team sources the rates, finds the allocation sheets in a site cabin and serves the corrected claim with a week to spare; the director declines the further help because the list left nothing that needed it.

Choosing the right stress test

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