If you touch them with a barge pole, burn the barge pole
I contracted Bell Build of Tilbury Road, Brentwood, England to split my London flat into two units at the end of 2019. The contract was worth about £140,000. As it was a RIBA contract, the work was evaluated and paid for monthly. Every monthly valuation throughout the job was inflated and had to be contested. If I hadn’t had a feisty Quantity Surveyor, this contractor would have doubled the contract price. Moreover, there were three disasters.
1) A subcontractor removed a hatch on the roof and didn’t secure it properly before a night of rain and the whole area of the roof drained into the building throughout the night.
2) The contractor put an electronic unlock button on the security gate, off scope and not in the contract, meaning that anyone could reach their hands through and open the gate. Moreover, the contactors, despite being asked, ordered and begged not to, always left the security gate wedged open, as well as the front door to the building, leading to the burglary of a resident’s competition bike, worth around £10,000, which he was unable to claim for, as the doors were left open. There was a second bike theft a couple of weeks later.
3) The final valuation was paid with a retention of 2.5% of the contract price (around £4000) to be released at the end of the defects period. At the end of this six-month period, however, the contractor launched a Smash and Grab adjudication, claiming a final payment of £76,000 for items taken off scope, previously paid for or simply made up, not what was agreed. The adjudicator ruled against the contractor, requiring them to pay all his costs.
Would I recommend Bell Build? No way. If you touch them with a barge pole, burn the barge pole.