In the first of a series of podcasts powered by J3 Advisory and Showhouse Magazine, Jack Bristow, J3 Advisory, and James Calland, ACS, discuss the world of insurance and mitigating construction defects
This article provides a snippet of the latest Voice of the Surveyor podcast, with host Rupert Bates, editorial director of Showhouse.
What are the key considerations that the industry should be looking at today?
Jack Bristow: I think timing and communication is a thread that runs throughout everything we do with developers.
As everyone should know, the earlier you engage on insurance with the insurers themselves or your advisor with the surveying team, so they can have some input into design, the better.
It’s important to make sure that everyone understands what the common goal is, what the objective is with regards to what’s being built, and how that is going to happen.
James Calland: To expand on what Jack has touched on there from a surveying point of view is that there’s various providers in the market nowadays, but there are still standard industry fundamentals that must be hit as a target.
Part of that comes down to timing. The earlier you can engage with people like Jack, the surveyors, and the providers, the better standing you will put yourself in.
We often hear about developers being concerned about design input from their structural warranty provider. However most claims tend to relate to workmanship rather than design defects. Is there a particular focus that you should be looking at? What are the priorities?
James Calland: I think the reason there’s a heavy onus now more than ever on workmanship is that 2023 products, whilst there are new products emerging on the market all the time, a lot of the projects are still using several tried and tested materials or processes that been refined over years.
Of course, products fail. There can always be a concern with the material itself. However, particularly in the UK construction industry, no different from other areas of the world, a lot of construction projects are still built by your hands.
They are still ultimately constructed by individuals. And as good as we all are, we’re only human, and we make mistakes.
Workmanship, I would say, is the single largest defect that we will see on a project now. The defect we talk about latent and inherent defects, so they’re defects to come in the future.
The whole point of the surveyor is to protect all parties involved to try and remove or reduce the risk of a defect being placed into the project today.
And whilst it may not come out today, it may come out in the wash in three years’ time. If we can get it correct today, then we haven’t got to worry about that.
Listen to the full podcast here.Â
