Dilapidations Schedule: Draft Items From Lease Clauses With AI

Give the AI the relevant lease clauses and your inspection notes, and have it draft one schedule row per breach: item number, clause quoted exactly, the breach, the remedy and a blank cost cell. You then check every clause reading against the lease, price the works from your own sources, and send the legal questions to a solicitor.

RICS's dilapidations guidance is dense, but its schedule format is simple, which suits this job: a numbered item, the clause relied on, the alleged breach, the remedy and the cost. The danger is that fluent drafting makes a weak claim look strong, and the guidance warns against alleging breaches that do not exist, proposing inappropriate remedies and inflating figures. So the AI drafts and sorts, while the surveyor reads the lease, prices the work and signs the endorsement.

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What RICS asks of a schedule, in plain English

RICS's dilapidations professional standard, in its 7th edition published in February 2024, is written for surveyors preparing schedules, quantified demands, responses, Scott schedules and diminution valuations. You can read it on the RICS dilapidations page. These are the points that shape an AI workflow:

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• What a schedule contains. The documents relied on, an itemised numbered reference, the lease clause, the alleged breach, the remedy required and, where relevant, its cost. RICS's sample format quotes the clauses word for word in a preamble, separates repair works from other works, adds a summary page and ends with the surveyor's endorsement.
• The endorsement. The surveyor confirms that all the works are reasonably required to remedy the breaches, that full account has been taken of the landlord's intentions as the landlord advised them, and that the costings are reasonable. The standard says to ask the landlord for those intentions in writing before endorsing, and to keep the reply on file.
• No exaggeration. A schedule should not allege breaches that do not exist, propose remedies that are inappropriate (RICS's own example is replacing items where a patch repair would be enough), or carry figures that are exaggerated or understated. A later dispute can bring a costs order against the party that overstated.
• Law stays with lawyers. Surveyors do not give legal advice and should avoid steps outside their expertise. If a document is uncertain, they raise it with the client and, if instructed, the client's legal advisers.
• Records. Keep the site notes, sketches, measurements, photographs and videos from the inspection.
• Costs. Draw them from reliable sources: invoices after the works, a competitive tender, price book data, recent tender prices, a quantity surveyor's advice, or a contractor's pricing of a full specification.

Say in your prompt whether the schedule is interim (served during the term) or terminal (at or after its end), because the standard treats them differently and the assistant will otherwise guess.

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The clause register: one row per obligation, quoted word for word

Before any defect appears, build a register of what the tenant promised. Give the assistant the lease and every licence, consent and variation; RICS lists licences for alterations and schedules of condition among the documents to obtain, and reinstatement duties can sit in the licence as well as the lease. For extraction with page references, abstracting a commercial lease with page citations covers the technique. Ask for one row per obligation:

From the lease and licences below, extract every tenant obligation about repair,
decoration, alterations, reinstatement, yielding up and servicing. For each row give:
document and clause number; type; the words of the clause, copied exactly between
quotation marks; trigger (continuing, every X years, end of term); any exception stated
in the clause. Do not paraphrase or summarise the clause. If an obligation depends on
another document (a licence, a schedule of condition), name it. If you cannot find the
exact words, write NOT FOUND.

A register for the worked example looks like this. The clause wording is illustrative, not from a real lease.

Then run the step that matters most: a verbatim check. For each row, search the lease PDF for the first six words of the quotation. If it does not match, delete the row and ask again. Assistants can produce a plausible clause that is not in the document, and a schedule that cites a clause the lease does not contain is the kind of mistake that discredits everything else in it. The type and trigger columns are the assistant's reading, so skim them, but the quotation column is the evidence.

Six defects, five obligations: notes in, draft rows out

Here is the case: a first-floor office suite of 280 m² with four months of the term left. The inspection notes, in shorthand, read:

Suite 1B, first floor, 280 m2. Term ends in four months.
Ceilings: 6 stained tiles, 2 cracked, by north windows (photos 4-7). Stains dry.
East window: one sealed double-glazed unit cracked (photo 9). Cause not recorded.
Interior walls, doors, skirtings scuffed. Tenant log: last decorated about six years
ago (photos 10-16).
Glazed meeting-room partition still in place, installed 2019 under licence (photos 17-19).
Entrance: name plate and vinyl lettering on glazed door (photos 1-3).
Two cassette air-conditioning units. Service file: last service 18 months ago.

Terminal schedule. Using the clause register and the notes, draft one schedule row per
breach: item number; clause (document, number and the key words); breach complained of;
necessary remedial works; flags. Rules: one breach per row; quote only clauses in the
register; if no clause supports an item write NO CLAUSE; propose the least costly
adequate remedy (repair before replace, only the items I recorded); write "breach
complained of", never "breach"; leave cost blank. Add FLAG LEGAL where an exception or
condition in the clause might apply, FLAG FACT where my notes lack a cause or date,
FLAG TIMING, or FLAG DOCUMENT where a document is missing.

This is the kind of table the assistant returns once the rules are tight. A looser first draft usually gets four things wrong:

• Over-broad remedies. It says "replace ceiling tiles throughout" where you recorded eight damaged tiles. That is exactly the inappropriate remedy RICS warns about, and it invites a challenge to every other row.
• Merged items. It folds the tiles and the window into one row labelled "building fabric", which hides two different causes and two different insured-risk questions.
• A clause that does not exist. It cites "clause 3.9" for the signage. The NO CLAUSE rule and the verbatim check exist to catch this.
• Conclusion creep. It writes "the tenant is in breach" where the format says "breach complained of", because an assistant tends to state conclusions the surveyor has not reached.

Where clause reading goes wrong, and what goes to a solicitor

The flags column is the part that earns its keep, because it separates what you can settle from what you cannot. RICS notes that dilapidations involve many legal considerations, and a flag is how the draft hands those over. Use five flag types and decide in advance who clears each:

The traps behind the LEGAL flag are well known. Exceptions such as insured risks, fair wear and tear or inherent defects can remove an item, and whether they apply depends on the cause and the exact words. The verbs in a covenant (keep, put, yield up) can change what is owed and when. A schedule of condition attached to the lease can affect the standard the tenant must meet, which is why you give the assistant every attachment and why drafting a schedule of condition from photos is worth reading alongside this one. Break clauses carry their own conditions. And if the landlord plans demolition or major works, its claim can shrink or fall away, which is the reason RICS wants the landlord's intentions in writing before you endorse.

Collect every LEGAL flag into a single list for the solicitor, one question each. For the example, item 1 becomes: "Lease 3.2 excepts damage by an insured risk. The landlord's maintenance file records a roof leak repaired in 2022, and the tile staining may date from it. Does the exception apply, and who must show the cause?" A question like that costs the solicitor minutes. A schedule full of unflagged assumptions costs far more later. For a broader list of clause types to check, a ChatGPT prompt for flagging risky clauses in a commercial lease is a helpful companion.

Costs: where the numbers come from and why AI stays out of them

The cost column is the surveyor's. The assistant can lay out the table, keep the source beside each figure and format the summary page, but it must never supply a unit rate from its own knowledge, because that is the figure most likely to be exaggerated or understated without anyone noticing. Put each item's price into the table with its source, using the kinds of source RICS lists. In the example (illustrative figures):

The items total $10,852. RICS's summary page adds the cost of works (inclusive of the contractor's preliminaries, overheads and profit), design and contract administration fees, professional fees for preparing the schedule and, where it applies, legal fees for serving it. With a placeholder 10% for design and contract administration ($1,085.20) and a $1,350 fee for preparing the schedule, the summary reaches $13,287.20. Ask the assistant to build the summary page, ask it to show its working, and then total it yourself. If the two differ, your sheet wins. For the quantity side of costing, how AI helps quantity surveyors with takeoffs and cost reports shows where a QS's checks come in.

Notice what this schedule is not. It is not the whole claim. RICS describes a broad rule of thumb for a terminal claim: the amount recoverable is typically the lower of the cost of the works and the loss in value of the landlord's interest, which a valuer assesses. A quantified demand can also include other losses such as holding costs, and those are outside this tutorial.

Repair items kept apart from the rest

RICS says a surveyor preparing a terminal schedule should consider separating the breaches so that repair breaches can be isolated, and its sample format splits repair works from other works. The reason is that a statutory limit on damages applies to breaches of a repairing covenant and, according to RICS, does not apply to non-repair obligations such as decoration, removal and reinstatement, which follow different rules. Whether and how the limit bites is a matter for the valuer and the solicitor. Your job is to make the split easy to see.

So tag every row with its type (repair, decoration, reinstatement, yield-up, servicing) and ask the assistant to produce two sub-totals. For the example:

Only about 4.5% of the works fall under the repairing covenant here, so the headline figure is dominated by items the limit does not touch. A client who sees only the total will not understand why the solicitor and the valuer care about the split. Keep a note of every breach, even those you exclude from the version you send, because RICS advises keeping that record in case it is needed later.

The tenant's side: testing a landlord's schedule row by row

The same method works from the other side of the table. When a schedule arrives, the tenant's surveyor can ask the assistant to check each row against the lease. RICS's Scott schedule is simply the landlord's schedule with extra columns in which each side records its position, and a tenant's response typically incorporates one. Give the assistant the landlord's schedule, the lease and the licences, and ask for queries only:

For each item in the landlord's schedule: (1) does the clause quoted match the lease
word for word? (2) does the breach described fit the standard and any exception in that
clause? (3) is the remedy the least costly adequate one, or does it replace where repair
would do? (4) is a cost source stated? List queries only. Do not decide the outcome.

On the example schedule, useful queries are: item 1, the insured-risk exception may apply and the landlord's roof repair in 2022 hints at a leak as the cause; item 3, the decoration cycle depends on the date of the last decoration, so ask for evidence; item 4, the licence refers to the "original layout", so ask for the plan it relies on. The tenant's surveyor's response carries its own endorsement, confirming that the works in the response are all that were reasonably required, that the costs are reasonably payable and that account has been taken of what the tenant reasonably believes the landlord intends. Those are judgements for the surveyor, and the assistant's queries only make the review faster.

When AI touches the schedule: the RICS standard on AI use

If you are an RICS member or a regulated firm, its standard on the responsible use of AI in surveying practice has applied since 9 March 2026. RICS's announcement gives the outline; the standard itself covers AI output that has a material impact on delivering the service, and its examples include summaries of documents that are then relied on when writing a report and AI composing significant parts of an opinion. A clause register built by AI and relied on in drafting a schedule is best treated as falling within that description.

In practice the standard gives you two obligations to build into the routine:

• A written decision on how reliable the output is, noting your assumptions and areas of concern, prepared by or under the supervision of a named, qualified surveyor who accepts responsibility for it. In this workflow that is the person who signs the endorsement, and the verbatim check, the flags and the cost sources are the evidence.
• Telling clients in writing, in advance, when and for what purpose AI will be used, in the terms of engagement.

A sentence for the terms can be short: "We use AI software to extract and sort lease clauses and to draft schedule wording from the surveyor's notes. The surveyor reads the lease, checks each clause quotation, prices the works and signs every schedule." The standard also mentions professional indemnity cover for AI use, so ask your insurer how it views AI-assisted schedules. A small firm's RICS checklist for responsible AI use covers the paperwork in more depth.

Sign-off sheet: what the surveyor holds before endorsing

The endorsement is a personal statement, so the evidence behind it should be on file before the signature. A one-page sign-off sheet works well, and the assistant can prepare it from the schedule:

Run the sheet on a closed job first, comparing the AI-assisted draft with the schedule that was actually served. The differences show where the instructions need tightening. The last row is the one that can never be delegated.

Questions surveyors ask about drafting schedules with AI

Can the AI read a scanned lease?

Scanned leases need text recognition, and both assistants can do it, but clause numbers, dates and money figures are where recognition fails. Check every clause number and every quotation against the original page. Length is rarely a problem: Claude reads PDFs up to 1,000 pages, though its visual reading of layout covers only the first 100, and OpenAI gives 512 MB as the per-file limit for ChatGPT uploads.

How do I handle a lease with licences and variations?

List every document in date order in the Project and give each a short label, such as Lease, Licence 2019 and Variation 2022. Tell the assistant to cite the document and clause for every row, and to list any conflict between documents, for example a variation that changes the decoration cycle, as a legal flag for your solicitor.

Does every schedule need costs?

Not always. RICS says an interim schedule, served during the term, is only likely to be costed where damages or forfeiture are being pursued, while a claim after the term ends is a claim for damages, so costings are essential. State interim or terminal at the top of your prompt so the assistant neither adds a cost column you do not need nor leaves one out.

Further reads

• RICS AI Standard for Small Firms: Register, Assessment, Client Notice — The register, assessment and client notice the RICS AI standard asks for.
• How Surveyors Use AI to Turn Site Notes Into Reports — The general routine for turning site notes into a report.
• Bill of Quantities Template: A Worked Example Checked With AI — Check a bill of quantities item by item with AI.
• AI Tools for Commercial Property Managers: Service Charges, Leases — Service charges, leases and other commercial property admin.
• AI for Commercial Appraisers: Lease Abstracts and Income Prep — Lease abstracts from the valuer's side of the same documents.
• Use of AI in Building Surveying: Client Data and UK GDPR Basics — Client-data basics before you upload a lease or photos.
• AI for Building Surveying: A Worked Fee Quote and Enquiry Reply — One enquiry walked end to end: triage, scoping questions, a fee built from hours, the reply, an engagement schedule and the checks before sending.
• AI Tools and AI Development: The Complete 2026 Guide — the AI hub, including every tutorial in the AI-for-business series.

Sources: RICS dilapidations professional standard (7th edition, published February 2024) and its sample schedule format; RICS standard on responsible use of AI in surveying practice (effective 9 March 2026); ChatGPT and Claude help pages. All clause wording, costs and fees in the example are illustrative.