4 Reasons You Should Use a Fully Licensed and Insured Company for Building Restoration Projects

You should always use a fully licensed and insured company for building restoration projects. In fact, you should always use a fully licensed and insured company for any kind of building projects.

It’s bad business and a bad decision not to use an entity that’s fully licensed and insured, and there are a lot of good reasons to do so.

WE’RE GOING TO LIST SOME OF THEM FOR YOU HERE.

1. The company has a solid presence.

By this we mean that in order to become licensed and insured, a company has to jump through some hoops. It’s a fair amount of administrative work, and it costs money, too. If you hire someone licensed and insured, you know that, if nothing else, they are established and set up properly to legally conduct business.

Someone or a company that is not licensed and insured may have ridden into town on their horses the day before. Is that who you want to do your work which may cost thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars?

2. Stay within the law.

Depending on the jurisdiction, there’s a good chance that a company that isn’t licensed and insured is operating illegally. You definitely don’t want to be in that position, especially with a big restoration or envelope integrity project. Also, if a company hasn’t bothered with licensing and insurance, what makes you think that company will be respecting building codes and bylaws?

3. Their insurance protects you.

You want the company working for you to have a good amount of liability insurance. If they do something bad wrong, you want their insurer to bear the cost, not yours. That would be like getting into a car accident and the other driver doesn’t have insurance. If the company you hire has insurance, you know that their pockets are deep enough to right any wrongs.

4. Worker’s compensation is important for covering injuries.

You want to be as sure as possible that you will not be liable if one the workers gets injured. That’s why it’s important to see proof of registration of the company with WorkSafe BC. (It’s different for each province.)

CONCLUSION

Just because a business is licensed and insured doesn’t mean they are going to do a job. However, starting off with someone licensed and insured is an important first step in the right direction.

There are other things you should and can do to research a company you’re thinking of hiring. As the old proverb goes—often attributed to Ronald Reagan, but actually translated from Russian-- “trust but verify”. Ask to see proof of licenses and insurance and WorkSafe BC coverage, make copies or take photos of the proofs, then contact the issuing entities to verify that the licenses are legitimate and in force.

Building envelope integrity is our business. So, if you need this kind of inspection done in the Lower Mainland, contact us.

Westerly Restoration provides building envelope integrity inspections and restoration in Surrey, BC and the entire Greater Vancouver area. If you have any questions about this article or would like to talk to us about building envelopes or restoration, please call us at (778) 881-2877 or use the convenient form on our Contact page.