Directly Appointed Installer Coordination Checklist

Recognise that you are now the point through which the two parties communicate, unless you have arranged explicitly for one of them to deal with the other.

Two separately appointed companies have no relationship with one another, so anything passing between them passes through you.

Ask the main contractor whether they are willing to coordinate the installer, what that would involve, and whether it changes their arrangement with you.

This option exists more often than owners assume, and it is worth asking about before deciding to hold the role yourself.

Write down what you think coordinating actually involves on this project, in tasks rather than in general terms, and check it against what you can realistically do.

The tasks are usually notice, sequence and answering questions, and they arrive at short notice during working hours.

Coordinating two companies is different from directing work on site; ask a suitably qualified professional if anybody expects you to make decisions about how work is done.

Note that there is probably no arrangement between the two companies at all, so neither owes the other anything unless somebody has agreed it.

This is the structural fact behind almost every problem in this situation, and it is easy to forget when both are on site together.

Tell each party that the other exists, what they are doing and roughly when, rather than assuming they have worked it out.

Companies frequently discover one another on the day, which is the worst moment for a sequence conversation.

Keep one written record of what each party has been told about the other, so you are not relying on your memory of two separate conversations.

Telling two people different versions of the same arrangement is easy and is the commonest failure in this role.

Agree how the installer gets onto the property and into the working area, and who is there to let them in on the day.

Access on a live site is usually controlled by whoever is building, which is not who the installer has been dealing with.

Check that the installer's working hours match what is permitted and what the main works are operating to, and tell them if they differ.

Hours are frequently constrained by a consent, a neighbour agreement or a site arrangement the installer knows nothing about.

Any restriction on working hours from a consent or agreement is confirmed with your local authority or the relevant document, not assumed.

Ask each party what they need for parking and unloading, and check whether the two requirements can exist on the same day.

Unloading a large item and running a building site frequently need the same piece of ground.

Ask where the installer's materials will be stored, who is responsible for them while they are there, and whether the space is suitable.

Storage responsibility for goods belonging to a third party is rarely agreed, and it matters as soon as something is damaged.

Ask what the installer needs in the way of power, water and facilities, and whether the main works are providing any of it.

These are the everyday attendance items most often assumed by one party to be provided by the other.

Agree who removes the installer's waste and packaging, and whether it is allowed to go into whatever arrangement the main works are already using.

Waste from a separate company arriving in somebody else's arrangement is a small and reliably irritating problem.

Ask the installer what has to be complete before they arrive, and put that list to the main contractor as a question rather than an instruction.

The readiness list is the join between the two programmes, and it is the only thing that makes a date meaningful.

Ask what has to happen after the installer leaves, and who is doing it, since installation frequently leaves work for somebody else.

Following work is the half of the sequence owners think about least and the half that stalls most often.

Confirm each date with both parties rather than with one, and tell each of them when the other's date moves.

A date agreed with one party and not passed to the other is the same as no date at all.

Ask each party how much notice they need of a change to a date, and note whose notice period is the longest of the two.

The longest notice requirement effectively governs how quickly the sequence can be changed at all.

Agree in advance what happens if the site is not ready on the installer's day, including who decides and who is told first.

This happens frequently enough to be worth a plan, and it is a bad conversation to have for the first time on the morning.

Ask whether the installation needs more than one visit, what has to happen in between, and who is arranging that gap.

Split installations create a second readiness list that is usually never written down.

Ask the installer what they expect the main contractor to provide, and ask the main contractor the same question about the installer.

Each answer reveals an assumption, and the gap between the two answers is what would otherwise be discovered on site.

Ask who is handling anything heavy or awkward into position, and whether that assumes help from people who are not theirs.

Assumed assistance from another company is a common and entirely unagreed expectation.

Never agree on anybody's behalf that their people will help another company; put the request to them directly.

Ask whether the installer expects to use access equipment already on site, and whether whoever owns it is content with that.

Shared use of access equipment involves arrangements between the two companies that an owner cannot make for them.

Ask who protects finished work while the other party is working, and what happens if something already completed is damaged.

Damage to finished work by a second company is one of the most common disputes in this situation.

Ask which party is making any final connection, and whether each of them assumes the other is doing it.

Final connections sit exactly at the seam and are the item most often assumed by both parties to belong to the other.

Write the attendance expectations down as two short lists, one for each party, and send each of them both lists.

Sending each party only their own list preserves the mismatch rather than resolving it.

Describe in plain words where one party's work stops and the other's begins, for each place the two packages touch.

The seam is easier to see when described physically rather than as a division of responsibility.

Ask who makes good at each seam, and get the same answer from both parties before the work reaches that point.

Making good at a seam is the single item most likely to be in neither scope.

Confirm who makes good at each seam in writing with both parties rather than relying on one of them telling you the other will.

Ask what the finish is either side of the seam, and whether either party is expecting the other to have done something first.

Finishes meeting at a junction are where sequence and scope both become visible at once.

Ask who has designed the junction itself, as distinct from the two things it joins, and write down the answer or the absence of one.

The published material describes junctions as regularly left out of both packages because neither side treats them as their work.

Keep a short list of anything at the seam that neither party has claimed, and raise it before either of them starts.

An unclaimed item raised early is a question; raised late it is a cost and a delay.

Ask each party what cover they hold for working at the property and confirm it with the insurer rather than from a document you were shown.

Confirming cover is done with the insurer, and a document provided at appointment describes a position at a moment.

What insurance applies to your situation is a question for your own insurer and for each company's insurer, not something to be settled from paperwork alone.

Tell your own insurer who is working at the property and what they are doing, and ask whether anything about your cover changes.

Building work affects household cover in ways that vary by policy and are only answered by the insurer.

Ask each party what happens if their work is damaged by the other, and note that you may be the only route between them.

With no arrangement between the two companies, an owner can find themselves in the middle of a question they did not create.

Ask who is responsible for the working area while the installer is there, and whether the main contractor regards the area as theirs during that time.

Responsibility for an area is a real question on a live site and is best answered before two parties are in it.

Record who was on site on which dates, since that record answers a surprising number of later questions without anybody having to remember.

Attendance dates are trivial to note at the time and impossible to reconstruct later.

Write down, for each part of the finished work, which company you would go back to if something is wrong with it.

This list is short, easy to write while everyone is present, and very hard to assemble a year later.

Ask each party what they provide with their work, in what form it arrives, and what it depends on you doing.

Arrangements offered with installed work often carry conditions about use or maintenance that only appear in the paperwork.

Ask what happens if a problem appears at the seam itself, where neither party's work is obviously the cause.

This is the situation the whole checklist exists to anticipate, and asking it directly often produces a practical answer.

Where two companies each say the other's work is the cause, that is a matter for a suitably qualified professional to examine and possibly for your own legal adviser.

Collect the documentation from the installer while they are still attending rather than at the end, since a company that has finished is much harder to reach.

A direct appointment ends when the installer leaves, and nothing afterwards obliges them to be prompt.

Record exactly what was installed, including the supplier and the product reference, so that a future repair does not have to start by identifying it.

Installed items lose their identity quickly once the packaging has gone.