What to Check Before You Hire a Contractor

You are choosing a person for a year of your life

Building a house or a commercial space means a working relationship lasting many months, involving a large amount of your money, over decisions you are not equipped to check.

Most people choose on price, because it is the only number that is easy to compare. It is close to the worst basis available.

Questions worth asking

"Can I see something you built five years ago?"

Not last month. Anything looks good at handover. A building five years old shows you whether the concrete was cured, whether the waterproofing held, and whether the plaster cracked.

Better still, ask to speak to that owner. A contractor who cannot produce a single client from five years ago is telling you something.

"Who will actually be on my site?"

Find out whether the person quoting will be involved, or whether the work is passed to someone you have not met. There is nothing wrong with subcontracting — there is a great deal wrong with not being told.

"What exactly is excluded?"

Get it in writing. Boundary wall, water connection, approvals, waste removal, temporary power. Most of the difference between two quotes lives in this list, not in the rate.

"How is payment tied to work?"

Money should follow progress. If a schedule has you paying seventy percent for forty percent of a building, you are carrying all of the risk. That is worth more attention than the total.

"How will you cure the concrete, and for how long?"

The single best technical question a non-technical client can ask. Curing is invisible, cheap, and the first thing cut under pressure. A contractor who answers precisely is one who supervises. A vague answer tells you what happens when nobody is watching.

"What happens if material prices move?"

Cement and steel move. Know who carries that risk before signing, not afterwards.

Warning signs

• A quote far below the others. It is a smaller scope or a thinner specification. Find out which.
• No written scope. If it is not written down, it is not agreed.
• Large payment demanded up front. A deposit is normal. Most of the money before most of the work is not.
• Reluctance to give references.
• Every problem is somebody else's fault. Ask about a project that went wrong. Everyone has one. The answer tells you how they will describe your project to the next client.
• Pressure to decide immediately.
• No site visit before quoting. A number produced without seeing the plot is a guess, and it will change.

Get it in writing, even with someone you trust

A written agreement is not a sign of distrust. It is what stops an honest disagreement in month seven from becoming an argument about who remembers what.

At minimum it should record: the scope, what is excluded, the payment schedule tied to stages, how changes are priced, and roughly how long it should take.

Anyone unwilling to put those five things on paper is telling you something useful, cheaply, before you have paid them anything.

What we would say about ourselves

We have been building across Delhi NCR for thirty-five years, and you talk to the people who will be on your site, not a sales layer. We put scope, exclusions and a stage-linked payment schedule in writing before work starts.

Ask us the questions above. If the answers do not satisfy you, ask someone else the same questions — you will learn a lot either way.

Tell us about your project.