ABSTRACT
The service the surveyor provides will be entirely judged on the contents of the report. It will therefore be seen that report writing is an extremely important skill for the surveyor to acquire. Trainee surveyors in surveying practices have traditionally developed their report-writing skills by reading other surveyors’ reports, and by inspecting a building at the same time as an experienced surveyor, writing a ‘shadow’ report and comparing this with the actual report prepared by the experienced surveyor. The surveyor’s professional indemnity insurer will usually insist that report summaries contain a standard limitation clause. In drafting standard conditions of engagement, surveyors need to be aware of the Unfair Contract Terms Act and the 1994 Regulations. In any defence of a claim for professional negligence that relied on a limitation clause, it would be up to the surveyor to convince the court that the clause was reasonable.
