How to tell whether your build is genuinely behind schedule
Compare what is physically built against what the contract programme says should be built by now, not against the developer's current completion date. A date that keeps moving tells you the programme is being rewritten to match the site rather than the other way round.
The date is the wrong measure
Developers do not usually announce a delay. They restate the completion date, and the new date is always achievable at the moment it is announced. Measured against the current date, a unit is never behind, because the date moves to meet it.
The measure that works is the original one. What did the contract say would be built by this month, and what is built. The gap between those two is the only figure that does not reset every time somebody sends an update.
How many times the date has moved
This is the strongest early indicator available to a buyer, and it costs nothing to track. One revision is normal on almost any construction unit. Three revisions in eighteen months describes a unit whose programme was never real.
It also cannot be reconstructed after the fact. If nobody wrote down what the date was in March, the fact that it has moved twice since is invisible by December. Keep the emails.
What to measure on site
- Which floors are structurally complete, against the number the programme requires by now.
- Whether the building is watertight, the point after which weather stops driving the programme.
- Whether services have started, which cannot happen meaningfully before the structure is closed.
- How many trades are actually working, and whether the number has fallen since the last visit.
- Whether materials are on site for the next stage or only for the current one.
The signal that matters more than the gap
A unit three months behind and moving is in a different condition from a unit three months behind and slowing. The rate of progress between two visits tells you which one you have, and a single visit cannot.
This is the argument for a regular record rather than an occasional one. Two photographs a year apart show a difference. Twelve monthly ones show a trend, and the trend is what you would act on.
Questions on this
The developer says the delay is due to permits. Is that plausible?
Frequently yes, and it is also the most common explanation given when the real cause is funding. The way to tell them apart is what happens on site: a permit delay usually stops one activity, a funding delay thins out all of them.
How far behind is normal?
Three to six months on a multi-year off-plan build is common enough not to be a signal on its own. What matters is the direction of travel and whether the developer's explanations have changed each time.
Can I do anything with this information?
If your payments are progress-based, yes, directly. If they are date-based, the value is in time: knowing early enough to take advice, or to plan around a completion that is not going to happen when you were told.
Read one before you buy one
The specimen shows the whole structure: status, what each payment was meant to buy, the forecast with its range, the photographic record and the limits of what was checked.