Contract Works Insurance - Why your builder should have it

Hi Everyone,

Something really bad happened to us last week, and I thought it might be an interesting learning exercise for all of us.

We are building a gorgeous duplex for a fabulous client. The build had been going extremely smoothly and and we were on track to have frames finished last week and the roof on by the end of the month. That was until last Monday night.

Late Monday afternoon, our bricklaying crew finished building the upper double brick party wall. This was a 3600mm high wall, 25m long consisting of over 10,000 bricks.

The very next morning our carpentry crew were due to head to site and finish the upper frames.

Tuesday morning I get a call from our client saying that the neighbour had been in contact and the wall had collapsed. At 3am a massive storm had come through with winds in excess of 100km/h and blown it down. The mortar was still wet.

The resulting damage was all of the upper frames were destroyed, the lower frames and structural steel on the side where it fell were destroyed. Approximately $160,000 in damage. Basically 75% of the work needs to be rebuilt.

Thankfully, we take out contract works insurance on all our jobs. We have never had to make a claim before. Our premiums are around $3,000 per job, a minor amount in the scheme of things

I know a lot of builders who don't take out contract works insurance to save costs, and clients who rarely build are probably unaware that this is an actual thing to ask about.

We all know about HBCF, workers comp and public liability, but often don't think about what would happen if a storm hit, or some other catastrophe.

So the lesson to learn is when you are assessing which builder to use, make sure you ask them if they take out contract works insurance.

Here are some photos of the damage

Cheers

Simeon


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