Here are some recent or memorable claims arising out of site information.

1. Ancient large bricked stormwater main was not where it was expected to be:  collapsed during site excavation
2. Public drain position plotted on council records.  Test drills identified “safe” locations for larger diameter piles which in due course were driven.  Two went through the known but mis-recorded drain, and on review it was discovered that the test drills self-plugged the hole they had made:  so the drain was found, but that was not known at the time.
3. Piles drilled, reinforcing placed, concrete pour underway.  The volume of concrete in one pile was significantly more than expected:  it turned out that it had been steadily blocking up a public drain seven metres below ground level.
4. Until a justifiably grumpy roofer complained, no one had flagged the issue that the roof was far too close to overhead power distribution lines.
5. Infill house on rear site built in a dip, which later proved to be an unrecorded overland flow path, later blocked by well-meaning landscaping efforts, thus creating a local lake around the house.
6. House built according to the local authority wind zone requirements, but the specific site had a much higher wind exposure.  The cladding details and structural bracing proved inadequate despite a structural engineer’s involvement.
7. Uphill site retaining wall of non-critical setout but defined height was built ahead of setting out the house.  The builder ignored the (perhaps sparse) drawing information defining the house floor levels and instead set it out from the retaining wall:  a difference of 500mm.
8. Builder issued with consent-application set of drawings to quote from.  During consenting, the Council required the building to be lifted by 500mm to avoid flooding.  Builder ignored the consent-issue drawings and built from the ones they had quoted on.  Not discovered until the pre-line inspection.
9. Mis-understood or mis-dimensioned setout drawings, discovered (a) after piles driven (b) after major project boxed and reinforced but in final pre-pour check (c) after slab poured (d) in the attempt to join up the new roof to the existing one.
10. Mis-understood height control lines:  (a) drafting line wrongly assumed as boundary (b) boundary assumed at top of a retaining wall instead of the bottom (c) position of boundary assumed within large unruly hedge which also concealed a steep drop (d) builder unilaterally decided to set the floor level higher than designed for (e) neighbour (and therefore council) placed significant importance on what reasonably seemed to be an insignificant dip in the boundary profile (f) protracted neighbours dispute over what was the “natural” level at the boundary, and at what date that should apply.