Including all relevant parties to a QBCC direction to rectify

When a complaint about defective work is received from an Owner, it’s important for the Builder that any Subcontractor responsible for that work, returns to rectify that work.

If that doesn’t occur, the Builder is left to rectify the work at its own cost and/or face a QBCC complaint which may result in a direction to rectify issuing through no fault of the Builder.

More recently QBCC has indicated to Master Builders that to ensure that regulatory action is directed at the licensee who is responsible for the defective work and includes any responsible subcontractor, the following steps need to be taken by the Builder:-

1. have a written subcontract with your Subcontractor;

2. be able to show that the defective work was completed by the particular Subcontractor and that you attempted to have the defective work rectified by that Subcontractor;

3. when you are contacted by QBCC, tell them that you believe the Subcontractor is responsible for the defective work and provide details of the Subcontractor;

4. ask QBCC to contact the Subcontractor and invite them to the inspection of the work … and invite them yourself when you have the details of that inspection;

5. at the inspection, tell the QBCC inspector that:- 

(a)  you tried to get the Subcontractor to rectify the defect;

(b)  you asked the Subcontractor to come to the inspection; and

(c) you believe any direction should be issued to the Subcontractor;

6. follow this up by email.

The importance of written communications in this process cannot be over-emphasised … you need to be able to substantiate each step that you take.

QBCC may issue a direction to both the Builder and the Subcontractor where it determines the Subcontractor has carried out defective building work.

In practice, those directions to rectify require the Subcontractor to rectify the work in a particular period (say 35 days) and the Builder to rectify the works in a longer period (say 70 days) thereby giving the Subcontractor the first opportunity to fix the work and the Builder the opportunity to fix the work if the Subcontractor does not.

Obviously, this does not relieve the Builder from its obligation to fix the work if the Subcontractor does not.

QBCC has also indicated that if it cannot determine the exact cause of the defect, it will only direct the Builder, not the Subcontractor.