Checking work
Keep a watchful eye on your project to ensure a high-quality build with Mike Hardwick’s handy tips
In the latest of his project management series, Mike Hardwick looks at quality-controlling your build
There’s a lot of activity involved in building your own home, so keeping on top of what’s been completed and how well it’s been done can be a challenge. You have the right to expect all the trades employed on your job to carry out the work to an agreed standard and with reasonable skill and care – enshrined in the Consumer Rights Act of 1 October 2015. So, there is legal protection in place, but how should you go about checking that work is up to scratch?
Keeping an eye on things
One of the principal roles you will have is watching things progress and challenging anything that does not look right. This is a fine line – keeping an eye on every trade like a hawk and pointing out any potential flaw is a recipe for friction and conflict. Imagine someone over your shoulder, highlighting every spelling mistake as you type an email – it’s infuriating and would drive you nuts.
So, try to avoid over-supervision and observe from a distance. That said, obvious mistakes or unexplained deviance from plans and drawings should be challenged. If there’s a reasonable explanation, all well and good, but if not, now is the time to bring things back on track.
Statutory checks
Anyone building a new home or undertaking a major remodel or extension of an existing property will be obliged to notify building control of the impending work at least 48 hours before it starts. Depending on the nature of your project, building control will wish to inspect what has been done. The frequency and depth of checks undertaken will depend on the scale and complexity of the project.
You have a choice as to who to use, which will largely come down to costs, influenced by the size of the job and likely risks involved. You can go down the traditional public sector route of using your Local Authority Building Control (LABC) service or you can go private and use an approved inspector (AI). If your chosen professional finds a problem, they will expect it to be rectified. If they identify a serious transgression, they can issue a stop notice (or in the case of an AI, revert the case back to LABC who have the legal power to order work to stop). Carrying on after a stop notice has been issued is a criminal offence, so if this happens, things have gone seriously wrong.
It’s important to remember that Building Regulations are all about efficiency, safety and accessibility but they are not a guarantee of build quality. They merely set the bare minimum standard that must be achieved before a completion certificate can be issued.
Structural warranty inspection
Often confused with building control inspections, the regime for your 10-year structural warranty is a separate process, all about minimising the possibility of you making an insurance claim against defective workmanship or materials. However, it will cover many of the same areas and in some instances will demand a higher level of quality than Building Regulations. For this reason, a great number of self builders use their structural warranty provider as their AI as well. It means only one inspector checking the work to satisfy both requirements, which is less disruptive, although you still have to pay for both services.
Self-assessment schemes
For light renovations and refurbishment, there is often no requirement for building control involvement and many trades are allowed to self-certify their own work under agreed schemes such as FENSA for window and door installers, Gas Safe for gas-fired appliances and NICIEC for electrical work. The certificates are given to you and can be copied to your local authority as required.
On a new build, however, your inspector will want to check that everything was compliant on installation, such as casement window openings and boiler flue locations, to make sure that these were correct when the completion certificate was issued. Remember, too, that if you’re going to register for government schemes like the Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI), you should only be using registered installers under the Microgeneration Certification Scheme.
What does ‘good’ look like?
Quality is subjective. What a tradesperson might deem a perfectly satisfactory level of workmanship might well be considered sub-standard by a fastidious client (read ‘difficult customer’ to the trades). Therefore, it’s important to establish what excellence looks like from the outset.
I always advocate that the client takes photographs of what they consider to be good quality work and includes these images as part of the small works contract. For example, source a photograph of neat facing brickwork with even beds and perpendicular joints, tidy pointing and clean faces. So, if you think the bricklaying is messy or
uneven, there can be no argument as to what was required, thus negating the “well, Guv’, no one’s complained before...” reasoning.
Checking against the specification
Your detailed construction drawings and schedule of works should specify what goes where and should be your first point of reference. This is where having a small works contract in place is worth its weight in gold. Your plans and specification will be incorporated as reference documents in this contract, which is your legal defence if something has not been done correctly and ensures that any changes are agreed by mutual consent. The Joint Contract Tribunal offers suitable contracts for reasonable cost www.jctltd.co.uk.
Making things easier to check
We still build the majority of new homes in the UK using traditional masonry construction. There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with that, but the quality of the finished structure is very much down to the skill of the particular builder who put it all together (see page 99 for a guide to finding the right candidate for the job). It’s effectively a multi thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle and it is very easy for dimensions to be just slightly over or under, or for angles to be a little more acute or obtuse than planned. But, these details don’t usually become apparent until it comes to the fit out stage, when unwanted gaps appear behind what should be snug-fitting units and these no longer suit the spaces left for them because dimensions aren’t quite right.
One solution is to consider using an offsite construction method, where the structure is computer designed and cut in a factory, making for an extremely accurate, high-quality build on site. Taking this idea even further, if you go for a continental ‘flat pack’ build system, your new home will be designed and cut, arrive later and be erected on-site at incredible speed with almost flawless precision, although you are likely to pay a bit more for the privilege. See page 69 for a guide to some other alternative build systems.
Professional help
If you don’t have the confidence or experience to be able to comfortably assess the work that is being done, you can employ others to undertake a contract administration or oversight role. This could be your architect, designer or a professional project manager hired to drop in at regular agreed intervals to assess the work carried out and to ensure it is being done on time and to the right standard to justify payment. They will probably charge between 1% and 3% of the build costs for their services in this role, but for your peace of mind, this can be money well spent.
What if there is a problem?
If you discover an issue, the obvious course of action is to tell the builder or trade involved. Explain what’s wrong and how you think it should be. Keep the conversation polite and chances are the issue will be rectified.
If things don’t proceed as planned, and you are not getting the results you expect, you may have to invoke the Consumer Rights Act. Citizens’ Advice (www.citizens advice.org.uk) are a great source of help and have prewritten template letters on their website to adapt to your needs. This is often all that's required. If you need to take things further, most firms have access to an Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) service. If your supplier or builder is a member of the National Custom and Self Building Association, they will subscribe to their consumer Code of Practice and you might be able invoke NACSBA’S own ADR process to come to a negotiated solution.