9 November 2026

Hold points and witness points: the difference that costs days

At a hold point the work stops; at a witness point it does not. Confuse them and you either build past a release or wait for one that was never required. Notice, waiting time, records, and who wears the lost day.

Reo is fixed, formwork is closed, the truck is booked for one o clock. At eleven it turns out the reinforcement inspection is a hold point and the engineer cannot attend. The pour is cancelled and the day is gone.

The two terms

A HOLD POINT is a point in the sequence where work stops until the nominated party has inspected and released it. Without the release, the next activity cannot start. A WITNESS POINT is a point you give notice for and which the nominated party MAY attend; if they do not, you proceed once the agreed waiting period has passed and you record that you did.

The difference is not how important the inspection is. It is who carries the cost of the no-show.

The classification is a contract question

Which points are hold points sits in the approved ITP, not in the site team judgement. Building past a hold point usually creates two problems at once: the work can be treated as non-conforming, and the evidence for the now-covered state is missing as well. Treating a witness point as a hold point loses days nobody reimburses, because there is no entitlement behind them.

• Hold points belong where the next activity covers the state irreversibly: before a pour, before closing a riser, before backfill.
• Witness points belong where the check can be repeated: functional tests, pressure tests, measurements on accessible work.
• Every hold point costs an appointment. Twenty of them on one lot is a programme risk, not a quality measure.

Notice is what actually gets argued

Both kinds carry a notice period, and it sits in the subcontract or the ITP. It runs from receipt of the notice, not from when it was written. Give notice without evidence of receipt and you have no footing in the argument about the lost day.

Three things in the notice do the work: the ITP check with its number, the time, and the consequence of non-attendance, which for a witness point means stating that work will proceed once the waiting period expires.

If nobody comes

Witness point: keep to the waiting period, photograph the state, carry out the check, complete the record, and send both referring back to the notice. Hold point: do not proceed, and give notice of the delay instead. That difference decides whether the lost day is yours or the principal side of the ledger, and on a job with an EOT regime it is also what makes the day claimable at all.

What the product does with it

VariationFlow marks ITP checks as hold or witness points and keeps notice, waiting period and outcome on the same check. A hold point with no release stays visibly open rather than disappearing into a folder.

Decision support, not legal advice. Whether a given check is a hold point is decided by your subcontract and the approved ITP.