GC in Fort Worth handed me his own punch list template and I have been building mine wrong for 9 years | Commercial Contractor Talk

Daniel Johnson · 2026-10-03T21:35:04.668962+00:00

I was doing finish work on a 40,000 square foot office fit out outside Fort Worth and the GC, a guy named Ray who has been running big commercial jobs since the 80s, saw me fumbling with my clipboard at the final walk. He pulls out this laminated sheet, maybe 30 lines, grouped by room and trade, and tells me he has used basically the same sheet since 2003. Here is the part that got me: he said clear punch items cost him about 1 percent of contract value per job when his super writes them vague, and I did the math on a $2.4 million job and that is $24,000 walking out the door on touch ups and second trips. I have been writing punch lists as I go in a notebook for 9 years, stuff like fix drywall here, and his sheet forces you to write the room number, the trade, and what done looks like. My second trip rate on my own subs dropped from 3 trips to 1 on the next job I ran with his format. Ray did not charge me for the template either, just said pass it on. So who else here has a punch list format they swear by, and does anyone actually track what vague items cost them per project? I want numbers, not just opinions.

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GC in Fort Worth handed me his own punch list template and I have been building mine wrong for 9 years | Commercial Contractor Talk - Opinions Matter