Construction defects and the client's remedies: what to do in the first ten days determines whether a later claim for rectification, price reduction, or damages holds up. The client should document the defect, notify the contractor in writing, and preserve the affected work before repairs start, since that record becomes the evidence relied on later.
Who this concerns
The situation arises whenever a commercial client, whether a developer engaging the main contractor directly or a property owner receiving completed works, discovers that the finished structure or installation does not match what was agreed. It covers defects found during construction, defects found at the final inspection (slutbesiktning, the formal handover review used under most Swedish construction contracts), and defects that surface only once the building or installation is already in use.
It applies regardless of whether the underlying agreement is bespoke or built on one of the standard industry forms, and regardless of whether the client contracted directly with the party responsible or through a chain of subcontractors. For the wider practice context behind this situation, see the real estate and energy infrastructure hub.
The position changes when the contractor, the guarantor, or the party ultimately bearing the risk sits outside Sweden. A foreign contractor may operate under a parent guarantee governed by a different legal system, insurance may sit with a foreign insurer subject to its own notice deadlines, and the forum for any dispute may already be fixed by a clause signed without close attention at contract stage. None of that removes the ten-day discipline described below; it adds a second, parallel notice that has to go out in a different form, sometimes in a different language, and to a different address.
What the law says
Under Swedish law as it currently stands, a client's remedies for construction defects sit primarily in the contract rather than in a single statutory catalogue that can be quoted in full here. The contract, whether bespoke or built on a standard industry form, sets out what counts as a defect, what notice the client must give and by when, and which remedy the contractor is entitled to attempt first.
The remedies themselves tend to follow a familiar order. The contractor generally has the right to rectify the defect itself before the client can insist on price reduction or damages instead. If rectification is refused, fails, or is not offered within a reasonable time, the client's position shifts toward price reduction or damages, and in cases of a sufficiently material breach, toward termination of the remaining works. Which of these applies to a given defect, and on what timetable, depends on the wording actually used in the contract signed and on the category of defect involved; that has to be read from the instrument itself rather than assumed from general practice.
A duty to notify sits at the centre of all of this. A client who becomes aware of a defect and stays silent, or who allows a contractor to start remedial work without a documented instruction, risks losing remedies that would otherwise have been available. The exact form and timing of that notice is set by the contract rather than by a fixed statutory figure that can be stated in the abstract.
How it works in practice
Day one: freeze the evidence before anything else
The first action is not legal, it is evidentiary. Photograph the defect from multiple angles, measure it where measurement is possible, and record the date and the person who found it. If the defect touches a structural or safety-critical element, secure the area rather than continue using it, and resist any pressure, from either side, to have it repaired before it has been properly recorded.
Do not let repair happen before notice
A contractor who hears about a defect informally and moves quickly to fix it quietly is not doing the client a favour. Once a defect has been repaired, it becomes far harder to prove what it actually was, how serious it was, and whether the contractor's own workmanship caused it. Any repair carried out before formal notice and without the client's documented instruction should be treated as a fact to be recorded rather than welcomed.
Issue formal written notice within the window
The notice itself should identify the defect precisely, reference the relevant part of the works, state what remedy is being sought, and be sent in a form that creates proof of delivery: email with confirmed receipt alongside a parallel registered letter, rather than a phone call or a conversation on site. Whoever signs it should have actual authority to act for the client; a notice from a project manager without a documented mandate is a weaker document than one signed by the counterparty actually named in the contract.
Choosing the remedy that fits the defect
Rectification suits a defect the contractor can plausibly fix without disproportionate cost or delay. Price reduction suits a defect that will remain, permanently or for a long period, where the loss in value can be estimated. Damages suit a defect that has caused a separate, calculable loss, lost rent, a penalty owed to a third party, the cost of alternative premises, distinct from the value of the defective work itself. These are not always mutually exclusive, but pursuing all three without distinguishing between them tends to weaken each one.
Where more than one contractor is involved
Defects on a project with a main contractor and several subcontractors raise a separate question of who should receive the notice. Sending it only to the party the client dealt with directly protects that relationship but may leave the client without a documented claim against whichever subcontractor's work actually caused the problem. Where responsibility is unclear, notice to more than one party, clearly framed as without prejudice to the allocation between them, is usually the safer course.
Insurance and third-party exposure
Most construction contracts sit behind some form of liability or product insurance, whether the contractor's own cover, a consultant's professional indemnity insurance, or the client's own property insurance. Each of these typically carries its own notification deadline, separate from the contractual notice given to the contractor, and missing it can extinguish cover even where the underlying claim against the contractor remains fully intact.
What to check before day ten
- The exact wording of the notice clause in the contract, not a general assumption about how notice is usually given
- Whether a standard industry form applies and, if so, which version and which amendments were made to it
- The limitation period stated in the contract for this category of defect
- Who has documented authority to sign notice on the client's side
- Whether the defect is more plausibly a design fault, a workmanship fault, or a materials fault, since the answer affects who the notice should target
- The notification deadlines under any liability or professional indemnity insurance that may respond
- Whether the affected asset carries any registered encumbrance that could complicate a later remedy
What clients ask in the first ten days
What counts as a valid written notice of defect?
A notice is valid when it identifies the specific defect, the part of the works affected, and the remedy sought, and is delivered in a way that can be proven, typically email with confirmed receipt alongside a registered letter. A verbal complaint or an informal message to a site manager, without more, is a weak substitute and should be followed immediately by a documented version.
Can the client choose price reduction instead of rectification?
Usually not as a first step. Most contracts give the contractor the right to attempt rectification before the client can insist on price reduction or damages instead. That right lapses if the contractor refuses to rectify, fails to do so within a reasonable time, or the defect is of a kind that cannot reasonably be rectified at all.
What happens if the defect is discovered after handover?
Discovery after the final inspection does not close the door on remedies, but it does shift the analysis toward whether the defect was latent, something that could not reasonably have been found at inspection, and toward whichever limitation period the contract sets for defects found after handover. The notice discipline described above still applies from the moment of discovery, not from the original handover date.
The numbers
The specific limitation periods, notice deadlines, and thresholds that apply to a given defect are set by the contract the client actually signed, and cannot be stated in general terms here without checking that instrument and the type of defect involved. What can be said is that these periods run from different starting points depending on whether the defect was visible at handover or only became apparent later, and that missing a contractual deadline typically extinguishes the remedy even where the underlying defect is not in dispute.
Cost follows a similar logic rather than a fixed figure. The cost of pursuing a remedy rises with the number of parties involved, the need for an independent technical survey to establish cause, and the gap between the position taken in the initial notice and the position the client ends up arguing once expert evidence is in. A notice drafted precisely in the first ten days is, in practical terms, the single factor most likely to keep that cost proportionate to the size of the defect itself.
Where it usually goes wrong
The most common failure is silence dressed up as patience. A client who waits to see whether a minor defect gets worse before raising it loses nothing if it does not, and loses the notice window if it does. Waiting is rarely a neutral choice under a construction contract.
The second is accepting informal repair. Letting the contractor fix the defect quietly, without written notice and without recording the original condition, removes the evidence a later claim would need if the repair itself later proves inadequate.
The third is treating every defect the same way regardless of scale. Pursuing termination over a defect that a reasonable rectification would resolve tends to weaken the client's credibility on the defects that genuinely warrant a harder line.
The fourth surfaces specifically where the contractor, the guarantor, or the insurer sits outside Sweden. A jurisdiction or arbitration clause buried in the general conditions can send the dispute to a forum the client did not expect, and that question of forum can end up being litigated before the substance of the defect is ever reached. Clients who are also negotiating a separate commercial instrument on the same asset, such as an acquisition agreement with its own price mechanism, sometimes discover that the two documents allocate the same construction risk differently, and only the wording of the construction contract itself controls the defect claim.
Finally, none of this analysis holds once the client has used the defective work in the ordinary course of business for a substantial period without raising it. At that point the question stops being what the defect is and starts being whether the client's own conduct has already answered it.
What to do next
The steps above cover documentation, notice, and remedy selection: work most clients can and should do themselves in the first ten days. What they do not cover is whether the specific wording of a particular contract actually supports the remedy the client wants to pursue, and that question needs the real document in front of a lawyer, not a general description of how these clauses usually read.
An initial assessment looks at the contract, the notice already sent or drafted, and the record gathered so far, and gives a view on which remedy the position actually supports before more time or money goes into pursuing the wrong one. Request an initial assessment.