Every construction defect lawsuit seems to begin the same way. There is water where it should not be. A client asking a simple but expensive question: “How did this happen?”
The building envelope is defined as those perimeter elements of a building (e.g.- windows, roofing, wall cladding), both above and below ground, that divide the external from the internal environment.[1] These elements keep rain and wind from entering the building and thus require extensive design and coordination between the elements.
In many cases, there were warning signs, often months, and sometimes years before the lawsuit that there were issues with design and/or coordination of the elements. This requires an evaluation of the parties involved and if they performed their work properly. The warning signs may have originated in design errors or omissions. Or the defect was missed in an inspection. An undocumented field change. An unresolved coordination issue. A schedule-driven decision. A quality-control process that slowly drifted from the written plan, among many others.
“An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”[2]
The cost consequences for ignoring early warning signs can be significant. It is reported that rework costs for general construction projects can range from 4% to 10% of a project’s total value, with some projects reaching upward of 20%.[3] This includes costs related to workmanship issues and design errors and omissions.
By the time water enters the newly constructed building, the root cause is often buried in project decisions that occurred long before anyone retained counsel, engaged an expert, or opened a claim file. That is one of the most important lessons for construction litigators, owners, design professionals, contractors, and experts alike: The root cause is often revealed in the contemporaneous project record, not merely in the resulting damage.
When attorneys hear “building envelope defect,” the discussion naturally turns to waterproofing, windows, roofing systems, flashing details, air barriers, sealants, and drainage. Those components matter. They often determine whether a building performs as intended.
But in many forensic investigations, technical failure is only the final link in a longer chain. The more important questions are often less about the failed component itself and more about how the project was managed by all of the parties involved:
- Was the design properly coordinated?
- Were critical details reviewed before installation?
- Were mockups, testing, or inspections performed at the right time?
- Were field changes documented?
- Were installation problems corrected or simply worked around?
- Was the building envelope inspected before elements were concealed?
- Did schedule pressure override quality control procedures?
For example, a simple water test for a window installation earlier in the project could save costly rework on succeeding installations.
Water is often the symptom, but process failure is often the disease.
Industry guidance reflects this same reality. Building enclosure performance depends not only on design intent, but also on coordination, quality assurance, commissioning, testing, and documentation throughout the project lifecycle. Standards and resources such as the Construction Specifications Institute, National Institute of Building Sciences Building Enclosure Design Guide, CMAA Quality Management Guidelines, ASTM E2128, and others reinforce the importance of understanding how a building enclosure was designed, built, reviewed, tested, and maintained.
An expert’s role is to evaluate whether the stakeholders’ actions, decisions, and professional judgments were reasonable under the applicable standard of care.
Standard of Care – What a reasonably prudent architect, engineer, or contractor would do in the same community at the same time, facing the same or similar circumstances.[4]
This is often where construction defect cases become more complicated than when they first appear. A leak may prove that something failed. It does not, in itself, prove why it failed, who caused it, resulting in damage, when it became observable, whether it should have been discovered earlier, or whether any party fell below the applicable standard of care.
The existence of a defect is evidence. It is not the entire analysis. The best evidence often exists before litigation begins and can be found within a broad range of project documents. It is rarely one photograph, one email, or one “smoking gun” document. More often, the strongest understanding of water leakage issues is built from ordinary project records:
- Inspection reports
- Requests for information
- Meeting minutes
- Field reports
- Project schedules
- Submittals
- Shop drawings
- Photographs
- Quality-control records
- Testing reports
- Nonconformance reports
- Change documentation
These records tell the story of a project as it actually unfolded, rather than as participants later remember it. A well-documented project can narrow the issues. A poorly documented project can expand them.
Contemporaneous records help answer the questions that matter most in construction litigation: What was observed? When was it observed? Who knew about it? What action was taken? Was the issue corrected, deferred, disputed, or ignored? Without that record, parties often rely on memory, assumption, and advocacy. That makes causation harder to evaluate and responsibility harder to allocate. In defect litigation, documentation is not just administrative housekeeping. It is often the factual foundation for expert analysis.
For construction lawyers evaluating a potential building envelope claim, the earliest and most important evidence often predates the leak itself. Understanding what was designed, documented, coordinated, inspected, tested, and communicated during construction is frequently the key to evaluating causation, responsibility, and damages.
References
[1] ASTM E 631 – Standard Terminology of Building Constructions
[2] Letter from Benjamin Franklin to The Pennsylvania Gazette, February 4, 1735
[3] Planradar.com review of multiple published sources from 1991 to 2024.
[4] The Architect’s Handbook of Professional Practice; Adopted to include similar definitions across disciplines
© Copyright 2026. The views expressed herein are those of the author(s) and not necessarily the views of Ankura Consulting Group, LLC, its management, its subsidiaries, its affiliates, or its other professionals. Ankura is not a law firm and cannot provide legal advice.
