Commercial Due Diligence Checklist Before Instruction

Why due diligence quality drives survey quality

Most commercial property problems are not caused by the inspection day itself. They are caused by unclear decision objectives, missing legal context, and assumptions that key documents will appear later. In practice, those gaps force reactive reporting, reduce negotiation leverage, and can leave unresolved risk at completion.

If the objective is to make a confident decision, your brief should answer three questions early: what you are deciding, what liabilities you may inherit, and what timeline the report must support. This is particularly important where you are balancing survey scope against cost and timing pressure. If you need a framework for fee planning first, use the commercial survey cost guide.

Stage 1: Define decision-critical outcomes

Acquisition decisions

• Validate condition risk before exchange and funding commitments.
• Identify immediate compliance, life-safety, or operational disruption concerns.
• Estimate short-term and medium-term repairs that may affect price negotiation.

Lease decisions

• Clarify what baseline evidence is needed to reduce future liability disputes.
• Check whether condition, alterations, and reinstatement risks are visible and attributable.
• Support legal drafting choices with practical evidence priorities.

Unsure which route to prioritise? Compare decision intent using pre-lease vs pre-acquisition survey guidance before finalising your instruction.

Stage 2: Build a document pack that supports interpretation

Core property and transaction pack

• Address, demised extent, floor area assumptions, and occupancy status.
• Heads of terms, draft lease or sale contract extracts, and planned completion dates.
• As-built information, previous reports, and known defect history where available.

Building services and compliance pack

• Testing/certification records for electrical, fire, and relevant statutory systems.
• Maintenance logs for critical services affecting occupancy continuity.
• Any planned works programmes or known landlord obligations.

Operational context pack

• Access constraints, permits, inductions, and roof/plant room limitations.
• Trading-hour restrictions, tenant sensitivity, and health and safety controls.
• Contact matrix: who can authorise access and release missing documents quickly.

Stage 3: Align scope to risk categories

A robust brief should explicitly allocate investigation effort across structural, fabric, and services risk. That prevents over-focus on one visible issue while hidden liabilities remain under-scoped.

Structural risk signals

• Differential movement, frame distortion indicators, or load-path concerns.
• Alteration history that may have changed assumptions about performance.

Envelope and fabric risk signals

• Roof covering condition, drainage detail performance, and moisture pathways.
• Façade weatherproofing, movement joints, and junction vulnerability.

Building services and resilience risk signals

• Aging plant with uncertain lifecycle and no replacement strategy.
• Systems that may fail business continuity thresholds under normal demand.

Stage 4: Lock reporting outputs before inspection

Report utility depends on output design. Agreeing outputs in advance helps stakeholders act quickly when the report is delivered.

1. Set a priority framework (critical, near-term, planned) with indicative budget impact.
2. Confirm whether the report must support legal negotiation, board approval, or both.
3. Define evidence format: annotated photos, location references, and decision summary page.
4. Agree whether interim verbal debrief is required before full written issue.

Common process failures and how to prevent them

Failure: Scope by template instead of decision

Generic scope often produces general observations without transaction relevance. Prevent this by attaching explicit decision questions to the brief.

Failure: Legal and technical streams run separately

Misaligned legal drafting can weaken how survey findings are used. Prevent this with a short joint pre-brief call and a shared issue log.

Failure: Late access escalation

Restricted areas discovered on inspection day can make findings provisional. Prevent this by mapping access owners and escalation routes before booking the surveyor.

Commercial nuance for multi-stakeholder instructions

In many transactions, the survey brief must satisfy investors, legal advisers, asset managers, and operations teams simultaneously. A practical way to avoid conflicting expectations is to define a primary reader for each section of the report. For example, a legal reader needs clear evidential statements, while an operations reader needs priority actions and likely disruption impact.

Where timelines are compressed, you can stage reporting so high-impact risks are communicated first, followed by deeper commentary. This approach preserves decision velocity without sacrificing auditability.

Instruction-ready checklist

• Decision stage confirmed (lease, acquisition, capex planning, or blended).
• Transaction deadlines and dependencies mapped.
• Core document pack assembled with owner for each missing item.
• Access plan confirmed for all critical locations.
• Risk categories prioritised in writing.
• Output format and interim communication protocol agreed.

FAQs

What is the minimum information to start a commercial survey instruction?

At minimum, share the full property address, transaction stage, target completion dates, approximate floor area and any known defects. If available, add lease heads, title information, prior reports and key compliance certificates. That allows scope to be matched to the commercial decision rather than a generic template.

Should the legal team see the survey brief before inspection?

Yes. Early legal alignment avoids gaps between technical evidence and contractual protections. A short pre-inspection brief shared with solicitors helps ensure schedule wording, repair obligations and reliance provisions are aligned before timelines tighten.

How do we avoid delays caused by missing documents?

Use a two-stage process: issue a preliminary instruction with core data, then run a document chase list with accountable owners and deadlines. Confirm what can be reviewed pre-inspection and what is expected post-inspection so programme risk is visible to all stakeholders.

Does this checklist work for both lease and acquisition instructions?

Yes, but priorities differ. Lease instructions focus on liability baseline, alteration risk and reinstatement exposure. Acquisitions focus on broader condition, serviceability, short-term capex and business interruption risk. The same checklist can be filtered by decision stage.

Ready to convert this checklist into a scoped instruction? Send the property address and decision deadline via the commercial enquiry form, and we can confirm a proportionate next step.