Building Science Editing and Proofreading Services

A building science report finds condensation and mould growth inside an exterior wall and concludes that the assembly "failed due to moisture intrusion." The owner reads this and blames the contractor for poor workmanship, the contractor blames the architect's detail, and the architect points to a change the owner approved during construction to save money on a vapour barrier upgrade. All three could be right about a contributing factor and the report, by stopping at "moisture intrusion" rather than identifying which specific mechanism actually let the moisture in, has handed three parties a finding each of them can use to blame the other two.

We edit what building science consultants and engineers produce to diagnose building envelope and moisture problems — building envelope failure diagnosis and root cause reports, moisture and condensation investigation findings, remediation scope and responsibility disclosures, and the correspondence explaining a diagnostic finding to an owner deciding on repairs. Our editors work on the report that has to identify which specific link in the chain actually failed, not just that the chain failed somewhere.

The specific failure mechanism is what a building science diagnosis actually needs to identify, and its failure is a conclusion broad enough that design error, installation error, and a material defect are all equally consistent with it. Failed due to moisture intrusion describes an outcome, not a cause, and a report that stops there has identified that something went wrong without identifying what, which is the actual question the owner is paying to have answered. We work through these so the specific point of failure is identified — vapour barrier improperly lapped at this location, a design detail that did not include a drainage plane, a material used outside its rated temperature range — since a design flaw, an installation error, and a material failure require entirely different remediation and involve entirely different responsible parties; so any change made during construction that could have contributed is disclosed specifically, given that a design detail that would have worked as originally specified but was later value-engineered without full review is a different finding than a detail that was flawed from the start; so the evidence supporting the identified mechanism is stated — moisture readings, thermal imaging, exploratory openings — rather than a conclusion presented with no visible basis, because a finding used to assign responsibility needs to be checkable; so where more than one factor plausibly contributed, each is stated with its likely relative contribution rather than blended into one summary cause, given that remediation targeting only the largest contributing factor while ignoring a secondary one often fails to resolve the problem; and so a client's specific question about what actually caused the failure receives the identified mechanism, not a repetition of the general finding. Reports written this way identify what to actually fix, and who is actually responsible for it.

Everything you send is treated in confidence, including diagnostic data, findings and client correspondence. We are editors rather than building scientists, engineers or forensic investigators, and we offer no view on causation, failure mechanisms or responsibility. What we can do is make sure the report identifies the specific mechanism, not just the general outcome.