Answer every notice to remedy in writing, with a date
When your main contractor says a defect needs putting right, a written reply that week keeps the repair, and its cost, in your hands. An unanswered notice lets it charge you another trade's price, often far more than your own gang would have cost.
Updated: . By Jack Butler-Kettle, Construction Claims Consultant.
Why it matters
Most subcontracts let your main contractor bring in others to fix a defect at your cost only after two things. It must tell you about the defect, and give you a reasonable chance to fix it yourself. That chance is worth money. Your own operatives putting right your own work cost far less than another contractor brought in at short notice. If you do not reply, or reply only by phone, the file shows a notice given and nothing done. The charge that follows is then hard to resist. A written answer with a date does one of two things. It gets the work done at your own cost, or it puts on record that you dispute the defect and why.
How to do it
- Log every notice or snag list naming your work the day it arrives, with the date it asks for action by.
- Reply in writing within the week. Accept and give an attendance date, or dispute it and say why, attaching any handover record or photograph.
- Attend on the date you gave, and record the close-out with a signature or dated photographs.
- Where you dispute an item, say in writing that you do not agree to anyone else being brought in to do it at your cost.
Example
Illustrative example. The scenario and figures are invented.
The facts
A flooring subcontractor receives a snag list naming 11 items in its vinyl. Seven are its own workmanship. Four are damage from a later trade's scaffold tower.
What happens
- The subcontractor replies within 3 days. It accepts the seven items and gives an attendance date the following week.
- In the same letter it disputes the four damage items, attaching its signed handover photographs.
- Its fitters close the seven items on the date given, and the site manager signs them off.
The outcome
No contra-charge follows for the seven. They cost the subcontractor £700 in its own labour, against the £2,600 the main contractor's replacement flooring contractor had quoted. The main contractor charges the four damage items to the scaffold contractor.
To have this set up for you, see our Contra-Charge Prevention service.