§ 8.01-250.Limitation on certain actions for damages arising out of defective or unsafe condition of improvements to real property.

Section 8.01-250 protects architects, engineers, surveyors, and contractors from open-ended exposure for work performed on real property improvements. No action for property damage, bodily injury, or wrongful death arising from a defective or unsafe condition in an improvement to real property — and no related contribution or indemnity claim — can be brought against a person who performed or furnished the design, planning, surveying, supervision of construction, or construction of that improvement more than five years after the services and construction were performed or furnished. Because this runs from the date of the work rather than the date of injury or discovery, it operates as a true statute of repose, not an ordinary limitation period, and it can cut off a claim before the underlying injury even occurs.

The section carves out two groups from that protection. It does not shield the manufacturer or supplier of equipment, machinery, or other articles installed in a structure on the property, and it does not shield anyone in actual possession and control of the improvement, as owner, tenant, or otherwise, at the time the defective condition proximately causes the injury. For those parties, the ordinary personal-injury and contract deadlines in §§ 8.01-243 and 8.01-246 apply instead, running from the time the injury occurs.