Skip to main content

Avoid Common Pitfalls And Traps


Article on Avoid common pitfalls and traps by adam

Adam Weaver adam@allrisk.com.au
05-05-2018

Avoid common pitfalls, traps, or mistakes

Being an owner builder can be incredibly rewarding - you get to design your home your way, and create something truly unique and valuable.
But just like Spider-Man, with great power comes great responsibility - if anything goes wrong on the project, you'll be the one held accountable.

Tip: Be actively involved in construction planning

As an owner builder, you'll have to take an active role in scheduling the work and the tradesmen. We'd urge you to build a little "fat" into your timeframes, so that if any early stage of the build is held up (by inclement weather, illness, or other unforeseen events), you won't have to seriously delay later parts. We find that early delays cascade into a "snowball" sort of effect, and on tight projects, a one-week delay very early could lead to a many-month delay at the tail end.
Remember, lots of people are natural optimists, and tend to under-estimate timeframes! Make sure you account for that.

Tip: Review the work being done

We regularly hear horror stories of owner builders picking the cheapest tradies they can find (because they're running out of time and money due to early budgeting errors), and having those "tradesmen" perform shoddy or completely ineffectual work. 
If you discover the errors early, the financial damage is minimal - you can sack the contractor and hire someone more competent.
But if you only discover the error towards the end of the project ... you could be talking about many many thousands of dollars in rectification work, involving tearing down perfectly good work to get at the bad.
As a builder, you're responsible for checking the quality of the work being done. You can't buy insurance for "faulty workmanship"; catching that poor work early is part of the builder's job.

Tip: Make sure your contractors are insured

Tradesman insurance is inexpensive and readily available. Just about every insurer in Australia offers a competitive package for trades type insurance, and each state's "builders warranty" insurance facility is simple to use.
Yet we occasionally hear from owner builders that tradesmen ask the owner-builder to carry the insurance risk for the tradesman, because he can't purchase it himself. 
Don't try to do that! Your insurance covers your risks, e.g. someone suing you for injury or damage caused by the project. Your insurance does not, and absolutely should not cover the tradesmen themselves - they need their own insurance. If your cheap-but-available contractor says that he needs the owner builder to buy the tradie's own public liability or home warranty insurance, then we'd suggest you find a new contractor. If he can't get the insurance himself - there's probably a very good reason why.

Tip: Take advantage of all the training and advice you can get

Owner builder training isn't compulsory in all states of Australia (though we think it should be!). Even if the training isn't compulsory in your state, we'd encourage you to take a training course (many are online and quite inexpensive). Remember this is one of the largest investments (your home) you're going to have - make sure you learn as much as you possibly can before committing your finances to the project.
If you're engaging a builder, project manager, or private certifier to run the project, make sure you talk to her (or him) as well! We always find that competent professionals like to share their wisdom with polite and engaged owner builders - talk about your timeline planning, your budget, and your vision for the project. A coffee chat early in the project could highlight some expensive errors to avoid.

Lastly: Get your own insurance

If you're renovating your home, make sure you talk to your existing home insurer as to the limits of cover. Don't assume that your home insurance covers everything (it won't). Most home insurers take the pragmatic line that your home insurance is for a home being lived in, not a home on a construction site.
Comprehensive owner builder construction insurance is extremely affordable, and simple to obtain.
At Allrisk we try to be extremely transparent about our specialist owner builder construction insurance. Quotes take around 90 seconds to complete and are instantly e-mailed to you with a break-up in costs for all optional extras. We do that so you can pick-and-choose exactly what you want to insure, and won't pay for any insurance you don't need.

For more information about Avoid Common Pitfalls And Traps, visit our website.
Table of Contents Main Site
Social Platforms
Insights
Table of Contents


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Choose Your Builder Carefully

Adam Weaver  adam@allrisk.com.au 25-03-2018 Talk to your builder It sounds obvious, but not all builders are the same; most are highly skilled, experienced, and competent, and some are ... not . Sadly, in insurance, we hear horror stories more often than not; usually when it's too late to do anything about the choice of builder. Ask questions Are you a licensed builder? Quite a few "builders" are actually carpenters and other trades, and whilst they may have loads of experience in the particular trade, are  less  experienced in budgeting and time management skills. For how long have you had your license ?  Do you have any completed projects we can view? Any client references? Don't be embarrassed to ask, you'd think that a good builder would be proud of his past work and his past clients would give him a good review. What other work do you have on the go? Realistically, most builders will be working on more than one job at any ...
Post a Comment
Read more

How Much Does Owner Builder Insurance Cost Victoria

In most owner builder insurance, the exact area to be covered or secured depends on what kind of package or product you take out. It is necessary to specify them with proper assistance from the company’s expert. It is also important to choose the right company for your property protection. The first thing you must do is learn about their terms and policies through checking their websites or calling them through the phone. In some places of Australia, companies provide service but with hidden charges. This is not the case all the time but it happens even here in Victoria. This is a very deceiving trick.  And for most of us who has goals, this is very obstructive too. You should be aware because it will extract a lot of money out of your pocket, leaving you with more financial troubles in the end. Australians should stop supporting this type of company. It is very important to spread awareness so that these companies will stop this kind of deception to their customers. If ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Owner Builder Insurance Cost

In some parts of Australia, you can never totally rely on a certain insurance company. In choosing the right one, you would really need to dig deep for its background first before you should decide to work with it. This is tough for  owner builders   because it could consume a lot of time and they have no other option but to do this. In many cases, companies hire incompetent tradespeople who fail to deliver a decent service. Some of them cannot even secure insurance because of lack of legitimacy. That is why sometimes,  the license  becomes meaningless. It cannot assure credibility anymore. It is unfortunate but many Australians have ignored this fact. This has been happening in the insurance industry for how many decades. Until now, you can still find corrupt companies trying to take advantage of other people’s weakness and vulnerability. It is now time we should address this issue for the sake of other future clients. In Australia, thousands of builder...
Post a Comment
Read more