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Fair play for contractors is important to Grays Rescue Building Management and our reputation, however, it can be difficult.

When tendering works you may have a company that always delivers for your clients and on the other hand you may have a company with a much cheaper price that is unknown to you. My instinct is always go with the contractor that continually delivers and whom I and the committee have built a relationship with and trust, but is that fair play??  I don’t believe it is, but we all do it. So how do we find the balance.. 

When a Strata Manager and Building Manager builds relationships with contractors, keeping these contractors at arm’s length is important, and my experience is that strata managers appear to be better at this than building managers, it may be that building managers are more face to face with their contractors. 

A process in place at Grays Rescue is to always have two of every trade servicing a building and share the work equally. Two plumbers, two electricians and two handyman who all know the work is shared.  

This becomes fair play and good things come from this process. It allows a building to more easily introduce other contractors into the mix, it keeps everyone at arm’s length and it changes residents ‘ perception of “jobs for the boys” that some residents like to throw at building managers and strata managers. 

So what about building management and strata management companies with their own maintenance divisions? Some strata companies do this very well and are very proficient.

Some run it as separate entities and run a smooth process for work orders in and out completed in record time with reasonable pricing and client satisfaction, all hail to these companies that can achieve it. Unfortunately, in some cases, this is not so. It can be partners of strata and building managers working under their own banners, luckily for the industry this is a minority.

As we at Grays Rescue are more forensic and investigative building management, we provide a lot of tenders for clients so we are arm’s length procedure driven.

Fair play is interesting and I feel the industry as a whole exhibits fair play, but don’t get me started on building management companies with their own cleaning divisions. This is a whole other ball game and a whole other blog…