Module 3 · Health, Law and Duty

3.6 Your Own Duty of Care

9 min read

Damp reports get tested more often than most survey work, because the sums are large, the disputes are emotive and the diagnoses are frequently contested by someone with an interest in a different answer. The failures follow a short and repetitive list, and none of them is about not knowing enough building physics. They are about scope, about evidence, and about the gap between what was found and what was written.

Learning objectives

By the end of this lesson you will be able to:

Identify to whom a duty of care is owed beyond the instructing client.
Describe the standard against which your work will be judged.
Set and record a scope that is honest about what was and was not inspected.
Recognise the recurring ways damp reports fail when tested.

Key terms

Reasonable skill and care: The standard: what a reasonably competent practitioner in the same discipline would have done. Not perfection, and not the best in the field.
Scope and limitations: The recorded boundary of what was inspected, how, and what could not be. The single most protective and most abused part of a report.
Reliance: Whether a third party was entitled to rely on your report. Can extend a duty beyond the instructing client, particularly where you knew who else would read it.
Limitation: The period within which a claim can be brought. Longer than most practitioners assume, which is why records must outlive memory.

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