Scope of works: what it is and how to write one
A scope of works is a written list of every job that needs doing at a property, described precisely enough that someone can price it or carry it out without coming back to you with questions. It records what is wrong, where it is, and what needs doing about it. Nothing else belongs in it.
It is the document that turns a walk round a building into work somebody can act on. Get it right and quoting is quick, comparable and hard to argue with. Get it wrong and every job on it becomes a conversation.
What a scope of works has to contain
Every line needs six things. Miss any one of them and the line stops being priceable.
DefectBlack mould to the wall and ceiling corner above the worktop
ActionTreat with fungicidal wash, seal and repaint
Location. The room, and where in the room.
Defect. What is wrong, in the words you would use in front of it.
Action. What needs doing. This is the part that gets priced.
Trade. Who does it, so the document can be split and sent out.
Priority. Urgent, needed, or monitor.
Photograph. The evidence, dated, showing the defect itself.
Room by room, or trade by trade?
Both, and this is the part most scopes get wrong by picking one.
Room order is how the work actually happens. It matches the route somebody walks through the building, so nothing gets missed and nobody crosses the property four times. It is also how the client reads it, because they think about their building as rooms.
Trade order is how the work gets priced. A plasterer wants their eleven lines together, not scattered across nine rooms. Sending a room-ordered document to five trades means five people each hunting through it for their own work, and each of them missing one.
The same list, presented twice, solves it. One walk, one document, two views of it.
By room, for the walk
By trade, for the pricing
Where scopes of works go wrong
Wording nobody can price
Make good, as required, and various repairs are not jobs. Two contractors will read them two different ways and price them two different ways, and the gap surfaces halfway through the work.
No photograph attached to the line
A written line describes a defect. A photograph proves it, dates it, and settles the argument about whether it was there before the work started.
A cause that was never established
Recording damp to rear bedroom wall caused by a roof leak, when nobody went into the roof, turns an observation into a claim. Record what you saw. Note what needs investigating as its own line.
Quantities and costs invented after the fact
A figure guessed at the desk is worse than no figure, because it gets treated as a measurement. If it was not measured on site, it is not in the scope.
Written up days later
The jobs you remember are the big ones. The ones that get missed are the small, cheap ones, and those are the ones that come back as complaints after the work is signed off.
Writing the scope while you are still in the room
Almost every problem above comes from the same root cause: the scope is written hours after the visit, from photographs that no longer have any context and a memory that has moved on. The fix is not a better template. It is capturing each job at the moment you are looking at it.
That is what SayScope does. You photograph the problem, circle it with your finger, hold a button and say what is wrong in your own words, and move on to the next one. There is no form to fill in and nothing to configure before you start. You type the address and go.
Your words become a written job line carrying the defect, the action, the trade and the urgency, and the finished document comes out grouped by room for the walk and by trade for the pricing. The photographs and your circles travel with the lines they belong to.
What it will not do is invent anything. It writes up what you said and no more: no guessed quantities, no guessed costs, no cause you did not state. The report it produces is a draft, and it carries the name of the person who signs it off, because a scope of works is only worth what the person who walked the property will stand behind.
Common questions
What is a scope of works?
A scope of works is a written list of every job that needs doing at a property, described precisely enough that someone can price it or carry it out without coming back to you with questions. Each line records where the problem is, what is wrong, and what needs doing about it.
What is the difference between a scope of works and a specification?
A scope of works defines the extent of the work: which jobs, in which rooms. A specification defines the standard that work is held to: the materials, the products, the workmanship. On a small job the scope is often all you need. On a larger one the two sit together, with the scope listing the jobs and the specification setting how each is to be done.
Should a scope of works include prices?
No. A scope describes the work; pricing is the contractor’s response to it. Keeping the two apart is what makes quotes comparable, because every contractor is pricing the same list rather than their own interpretation of a conversation.
How detailed does a scope of works need to be?
Detailed enough that a trade who was not at the visit can price the line without calling you. In practice that means a specific location, a specific defect, a specific action, and a photograph. Vague instructions like make good or as required are where disputes start, because the person pricing and the person doing the work read them differently.
Is there a scope of works template?
Templates exist, but the useful structure is simple enough to hold in your head: location, defect, action, trade, priority, photo. The harder part is not the layout of the document, it is capturing every job accurately while you are standing in the room rather than reconstructing them from memory that evening.