Check renovation contractors: minor works, electrical work, contracts and defects

Before you start

BD provides registers for building professionals and contractors. For minor works, check the relevant class, type and item rather than assuming a listed company can perform every task. Work on fixed electrical installations, including relevant alterations and repairs, requires a registered electrical contractor; EMSD's register helps verify identity. A decoration firm's business registration does not replace the required technical registration. Equally, do not treat every painting or furniture task as the same regulated building work. Ask a competent professional when structural alterations, approvals or the correct works category are uncertain, before demolition begins.

What to do, step by step

1. Break the quotation into identifiable tasks, using drawings and dimensions where relevant. Clarify whether approvals, professionals or minor-works procedures are required before demolition, rather than accepting a general promise to handle paperwork later.
2. Search BD and EMSD by company name and registration number. Check validity, permitted scope and the actual subcontracting arrangement, identifying which registered business accepts responsibility for electrical or other regulated work.
3. Put materials, brands, dates, staged payments, insurance, maintenance and defect arrangements in the contract. Agree the scope and price of each variation in writing before the extra work proceeds, retaining the revised document.
4. Review completed progress before each agreed payment. Prepare a defects list and obtain the applicable completion documents. For electrical work, ask the registered contractor for the work-completion certificate and keep it with the contract.

Costs, timing, and things to check

Owner, tenant, owners' corporation and management permissions may differ. Confirm building work hours and protection of communal areas, and keep those requirements separate from statutory technical approvals.

For a dispute, preserve contracts, dated photographs, payments and messages. Follow the contract and appropriate advice rather than assuming every defect permits withholding the entire remaining balance.

A practical example

A family renovating a kitchen and moving sockets asks who will perform the fixed electrical work, then verifies that subcontractor in EMSD's register. Additional sockets become a written variation with an agreed price. At handover, they collect certification, material records and a defects list instead of relying only on the designer's business card and social-media photographs.