Choosing contractors for insurance work on home

littlerock

Another question if anyone can help. If you have made an insurance claim for a large home repair project, involving several different trades,are you able to choose any of your preferred tradesmen for some of the work?

From what I can see, if you are not taking a cash settlement and managing it yourself, but leaving it to the insurers or a project manager to manage the project, they prefer to let the whole thing out to one single building firm to do everything. This seems to conflict with you right as an owner to chose your own builders. Anyone been through this?

jk0

littlerock wrote: »

Another question if anyone can help. If you have made an insurance claim for a large home repair project, involving several different trades,are you able to choose any of your preferred tradesmen for some of the work?

From what I can see, if you are not taking a cash settlement and managing it yourself, but leaving it to the insurers or a project manager to manage the project, they prefer to let the whole thing out to one single building firm to do everything. This seems to conflict with you right as an owner to chose your own builders. Anyone been through this?

I let the appointed builder crack on. Why make work for yourself?

Doozergirl

There's a difference between choosing your own building company to project manage and carry out the work, and expecting the insurer's project manager to deal with random subcontractors they don't know as well as their own.

No one is going to reasonably say it's okay to substitute their own staff in places for someone a client has used a couple of times in the past.

I'd say it's all or nothing.

Bigphil1474

OP, when we had subsidence a few years ago, we left it all to the insurers project manager. Any issues we had, we took up with the insurers representative, and all worked out fine. You might get into difficulty sorting out any problems if you've used your preferred contractors, whereas if it's the insurers people, you can deal with your insurer about it. Ours was about £25k of work so depend on scale I suppose.

TELLIT01

The insurer will know the reliable building contractors in your area far better than you will. They will also project manage the work. If you do it yourself you will have to arrange all the trades and do all the project management. Leave it to the insurers.

littlerock

How trusting you all are of insurers and their loss adjustors. It is not true that the insurers invariably know who the better tradesmen are in my area more than I do. I have spent some time in the past restoring Victorian houses with original features and know from experience how many builders will cut corners where they can. Not necessarily because they are greedy, but one man's original feature to be restored, is another's ancient eye sore.

Builders like things nice and simple, and tend to fall into the ancient eye sore camp. If you want a original feature loving builder, they cost more which is why you might want to use then for a particular restoration job and pay the extra it costs.

KeithP

littlerock wrote: »

This seems to conflict with you right as an owner to chose your own builders.

What right is this that you speak of?

As the insurance company are paying, they get to choose who they pay - i.e. who does the work.

It's simple, you want your tradesmen, then you pay them.

phill99

TELLIT01 wrote: »

The insurer will know the reliable building contractors in your area far better than you will. They will also project manage the work. If you do it yourself you will have to arrange all the trades and do all the project management. Leave it to the insurers.

I can guarantee you that this is rubbish.


Insurers go to the lowest bidder. And that bidder may well come from 200 miles away.


I run a property maintenance company and have often put in quotes for local works for insurance companies, only to find that the work has been awarded to a company in South Wales (I'm based in Essex).


So it is nothing to do with local reliable companies. It is all about lowest price to the insurers.

Doozergirl

littlerock wrote: »

How trusting you all are of insurers and their loss adjustors. It is not true that the insurers invariably know who the better tradesmen are in my area more than I do. I have spent some time in the past restoring Victorian houses with original features and know from experience how many builders will cut corners where they can. Not necessarily because they are greedy, but one man's original feature to be restored, is another's ancient eye sore.

Builders like things nice and simple, and tend to fall into the ancient eye sore camp. If you want a original feature loving builder, they cost more which is why you might want to use then for a particular restoration job and pay the extra it costs.

Yes, but you're referring to one person.

I'm that person. The one that pulls them all together, acts as custodian for the property and project manager and gets paid for the bringing my own people and overseeing them and what they do as a collective.

Bringing in a random plasterer here and a bricklayer there and expecting one person to act as custodian and project manager overseeing people they don't know isn't going to work.