MahaRERA now expects developers to assess and publish construction quality every year, on top of the five-year defect liability. Most of what an occupant complains about in those five years is finishing work — here is how to make that a record you can produce rather than an argument you have to win.
For most of RERA's life a developer's obligation on quality was stated after the fact: fix defects reported within five years of possession, free of cost to the buyer, within the prescribed period once a complaint is raised. MahaRERA's quality-assurance framework moves that obligation forward. Developers are expected to assess the quality of their own construction, certify it annually and publish it — rather than wait for somebody to find a problem and file against it.
The certificate is a project-level assessment covering structural design, the quality of materials used, the skill of the workforce and safety on site, supported by test results. Because it is published rather than filed away, it becomes something a buyer, a lender or a competitor can read.
Why this lands on the finishing contractor
Read the defect complaints that actually get filed and the pattern is consistent: very few concern columns or slabs. They are about water appearing where it should not, tiles that sound hollow underfoot, a bathroom floor that holds a puddle, a window that lets driven rain into the plaster, a lobby edge chipped inside a year. Finishing work is what an occupant touches every day, so finishing work is what generates the complaint.
Which means the liability window sits largely on the phase that begins after the structure is done — and the annual certificate asks a developer to say something specific about material quality and workforce skill during exactly that phase.
What certifiable finishing work looks like in practice
- Waterproofing ponded and held before the screed covers it, with the date and result recorded per unit
- Concealed plumbing pressure-checked before tiling, not after a complaint
- Material batch numbers captured for tile, stone and adhesive, so a shade or quality query has an answer
- Floor levels and hollowness sounded per flat rather than per sample flat
- Riser heights measured across each flight and written down
- A snag list per unit, with the correction signed off before the unit is offered for inspection
None of this is additional work. It is what a competent finishing team already does, written down. The difference the certificate makes is that undocumented good practice and undocumented bad practice look identical on paper.
The question worth asking before you appoint
Ask a prospective finishing contractor what they will hand over at the end of each floor. If the answer is a finished floor, then the quality claim in your annual certificate is resting on memory. If the answer includes hold-point records — waterproofing tested on this date, plumbing checked on this date, snags closed on this date — you have something to point at.
It also changes the economics of the five-year window. A waterproofing defect found before the screed goes down costs a morning. The same defect found by an occupant in year three costs the tiling, the ceiling below, and a complaint with a clock running on it.
Where the burden really falls
Formally the developer signs the certificate and carries the liability. Practically, most of the evidence behind it is generated by whoever is running the finishing phase, floor by floor. Splitting that phase across five separately appointed trades makes assembling one coherent quality record considerably harder than keeping it with one contractor who is already sequencing them.
Chamunda Constructions runs the complete finishing phase for Mumbai builders — waterproofing through to handover — with checks recorded at each stage rather than reconstructed at the end. If you are putting together a project's quality documentation, that record is worth specifying before work starts rather than requesting after it.