Tips to get builders to finish work?

[SparkyUK]

We have been trying to get our project manager to finish up our house renovations and we are getting nowhere. Does anyone have any tips? We are withholding further payments, and have threathened to get another team in to finish the work (and deduct the bill from his invoice) but nothing seems to have any traction. There is only about a weeks worth of work left, all written out on our snag list, but he just won't commit to doing the work.

Last thursday, for instance, he sent two guys in to work on the kitchen install. One was the electrician which meant no one was working on finishing off the electrics . They worked for a half day (and a lot of the work was substandard and will have to be redone/fixed), and promised to come back the next day, but didn't and the PM didn't return our calls until Sunday night. (We're still playing phone tag as he doesn't answer our calls it seems.)

We all started out great 3 months ago, and things are at least outwardly amicable, though he knows we are annoyed. I just want it finished now!

By the way, my due date was this past week and I'm having a home birth, and even that hasn't gotten them to finish off the work.

I feel for you, but I'm afraid I don't have any tips. What happens is they have another job lined up to start as the old job is drawing to a close. The fact that the old job hasn't actually been completed and the old clients can't get on with living in their house is irrelevant to them. Our builders left us without a kitchen for several weeks, at a time when we had twins under a year old and a six year old. It was the plasterer who really did it for me. He would fail to turn up when expected or turn up for a short while and then disappear without trace. I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown and they simply didn't care.

Get your husband/partner to deal with it - I don't think they could care less what a woman says or thinks, and you have enough on your plate!

As Artyjools says, they've got a new job lined up.

BiL is a professional project manager and developer and he still has exactly this kind of problem - people disappear, he's left phoning their mobiles, they promise to come back, they don't turn up, etc etc. It's certainly not a case that being a man means they'll listen to you!

One thing that BiL does it to phone again and again and again.

Have you tried writing to him that you unless things are satisfactorily resolved within a certain date to an agreed standard, you will get in a new set of builders and deduct the cost from his invoice, and outlining what he has to do to prevent this? I think that putting it down in writing might start getting things moving again. You could try checking with the CAB to see what your rights in this case would be.

If necessary, don't be afraid to go to the small claims court to refuse to pay an invoice - a friend did this because of shoddy buiding work, and he said he just showed the judge the photos he'd taken of the work, and the judge ruled in his favour almost immediately.