Twelve questions to ask a builder before you hire one

You are about to hand somebody five or six figures and the keys to your house. The quote tells you what they will charge. These tell you who they are.

None of them are trick questions, and a good builder will not mind any of them. How someone reacts to being asked is itself part of the answer.

About the business

1. What is your public liability insurance, and can I see the certificate?

Ask for the document, not the number. It should be current, and it should name the business you are contracting with. If they employ anyone, employers’ liability is a legal requirement too.

2. Are you registered for the notifiable work on my job?

Most electrical work in a home is notifiable under Part P of the building regulations. Either a registered electrician self-certifies it, or a building control application covers it. Gas work must be done by someone on the Gas Safe Register. Both registers are public and searchable, which makes them among the few claims in this trade you can independently verify. Ask which applies to your job and who is doing it.

3. Do you guarantee your workmanship, for how long, and what does it cover?

Workmanship guarantees and manufacturer warranties are different things. A roof covering might carry a twenty-year manufacturer warranty and a two-year workmanship guarantee. Ask what happens if something fails in year three, and who you call.

4. Are you a member of any trade body?

Federation of Master Builders, TrustMark, and similar schemes carry vetting and in some cases dispute resolution. Membership is not a guarantee of quality and plenty of excellent builders belong to none — but it is a checkable fact, and worth knowing either way.

About the work

5. Who will actually be on site?

Very few builders do every trade themselves. What you want to know is which parts are their own team and which are subcontracted, and whether the person you are talking to will be on site or managing from elsewhere. Neither answer is wrong. Not knowing which you are getting is the problem.

6. How many jobs will you be running at once?

A builder juggling four sites is not necessarily neglecting yours, but it does explain gaps. Ask plainly, and ask what happens to your programme if another job overruns.

7. What is the programme, and what would move it?

You want a sequence with rough durations, and an honest list of the things that could push it: a bad ground survey, a lead time on structural steel, weather at the wrong stage, a building control inspection that has to be booked.

8. What happens when we hit something unexpected?

Every renovation hits something. The answer you want describes a process — work stops, you get told, you get a price, you decide — rather than a reassurance that it will not happen.

About the money

9. Will I get an itemised written quotation?

Not a figure on a page. A breakdown, with exclusions written down and any provisional sums labelled as provisional. If you want to change something in week five, an itemised quote is what makes that a conversation rather than an argument.

10. What is the payment schedule tied to?

Stages of completed work, not dates on a calendar. Ask what the deposit covers and why it is that size. A modest sum for materials ordered up front is normal; a large payment before anything happens means you are funding the job rather than buying it.

11. Is VAT included?

On a £60,000 job the difference between inclusive and exclusive is £12,000. Ask once, at the start, and get it in writing.

About the site

12. What will living here be like?

The question people forget, and the one they care most about afterwards. Which days will the water be off. Where the skip goes. Whether the site is sheeted up and swept at the end of the day or left as it falls. Whether anyone needs access through the house, and at what times. Whether there is a working toilet, and whose.

Reviews of building work almost never praise the brickwork. They praise the builder who cleared up every evening and told them what was happening tomorrow — because that is the part the customer actually experiences for three months.

Two answers worth paying attention to

“I would rather not start that.” A builder who tells you early that something will not work, or is not worth the money, is more useful than one who agrees to everything. Enthusiasm for a bad idea is not a good sign.

“I do not know, I will find out.” On questions about ground conditions, drainage runs or what is behind a wall, this is the correct answer. Certainty about things nobody can know yet is the thing to be wary of.

Getting the answers in writing

Ask these on the phone or at the first visit, then get the ones that matter — insurance, registrations, guarantee, payment schedule, exclusions — confirmed in writing before you commit. Not because you expect a problem, but because the written version is the one you can both check later.

If you would like to put these to us, get in touch and ask away.