Our Quinovic property managers sometimes encounter landlords who are keen to use their own handymen for maintenance and other odd jobs on their properties, rather than those selected from our “official” suppliers list of tried and tested professional operators.
There is more at stake than the risk of shoddy workmanship, with strict requirements for landlords and tradesmen under the Health and Safety at Work Act and the Health and Safety at Work (Asbestos) Regulations 2016, especially around the issue of asbestos.
While the new regulations concerning asbestos are more applicable to commercial properties, they also apply to residential properties in certain situations, such as if the property is undergoing renovation, demolition or refurbishment. As PCBU’s, landlords and property managers both owe a duty of care so far as is reasonably practicable to ensure the health and safety of tenants, contractors and visiting members of the public affected by work on the property. The primary obligation is to ensure all work carried out on the property is conducted safely and all foreseeable hazards are minimised. This includes ensuring people engaged to do the work are competent and appropriately qualified to do so. All parties likely to be affected by the work should be notified of potential hazards and how to eliminate or minimise exposure to these hazards.
It is therefore important that if you are engaging your own tradesmen to conduct work involving asbestos you must consider what training and experience they should have to do the work safely. Through the Quinovic Hazard Management program, all tradespeople and contractors will be informed if the property contains, or might contain asbestos, so they can plan to undertake any renovation or repair work safely. This will also mitigate your risk as a landlord. If asbestos is found to be in poor condition, a licensed contractor will need to be engaged and an Asbestos Management Plan will be required.
We also require our trusted suppliers to sign up to our Health and Safety Contractors agreement, which not only holds a ‘service expectation’ to ensure minimal disruption for your tenants during any maintenance, but also contains strict requirements for compliance to all relevant safety legislation, approved codes of practice and industry standards. Unfortunately, where ‘random’ handymen are engaged by landlords we are not able to control compliance in this area.
It all adds up to a compelling case for our investors to trust their property managers to choose the right people for the job from our trusted suppliers list.
