Commercial Painting near you

Regulation 2 of the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2015 defines construction work as the carrying out of any building, civil engineering or engineering construction work, and it goes on to include the construction, alteration, conversion, fitting out, commissioning, renovation, repair, upkeep, redecoration or other maintenance of a structure. Decorators are sometimes surprised to find their trade written into a construction regulation by name; commercial clients are more often surprised to find themselves defined as a client, which regulation 2 makes any person for whom a project is carried out.

The duty that follows sits in regulation 4. A client must make suitable arrangements for managing the project, including allocating sufficient time and other resources, must maintain and review those arrangements, must give pre-construction information to every designer and contractor being considered or appointed, and must make sure a construction phase plan is drawn up before work begins. In a decorating context that is not bureaucracy for its own sake: the pre-construction information is where the client tells the contractor about the asbestos register, the live services, the fragile roof light over the atrium and the fact that the third floor is occupied.

Regulation 7 is what makes this a genuinely commercial issue rather than a general one. Where the client is domestic, the client duties pass to the contractor, or to the principal contractor where there is more than one. A business client has no such escape route. If your organisation is paying for the redecoration of premises it occupies or lets, the duties stay with your organisation, and appointing a good contractor discharges them only if you can show you checked and resourced the arrangements.

Regulation 5 turns on a single question: is more than one contractor involved, or is it reasonably foreseeable that more than one will be. A repaint that also needs a scaffolder, an electrician to drop light fittings or a flooring contractor to lift carpet crosses that line easily. Where it is crossed, the client must appoint in writing a designer with control over the pre-construction phase as principal designer, and a contractor as principal contractor, as soon as practicable and in any event before the construction phase begins. If the client does not make those appointments, regulation 5 leaves the client carrying the missing role's duties.

Notification is a separate test with hard numbers. Under regulation 6 a project is notifiable where construction work on a construction site is scheduled to last longer than 30 working days and have more than 20 workers working simultaneously at any point, or to exceed 500 person days. Most single-building decorating contracts fall well short of both. A cyclical redecoration across a large estate, or a long fit-out where decorating is one package among many, can reach them, and the notice goes to the Health and Safety Executive before the construction phase starts.

One devolution point to keep straight. CDM 2015 applies in Great Britain. Northern Ireland has its own rule, the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2016, which came into operation on 1 August 2016 and is enforced by the Health and Safety Executive for Northern Ireland. The structure is similar but it is a separate instrument, so quote the right one in a Northern Irish contract.

Section 2(3) of the Consumer Rights Act 2015 defines a consumer as an individual acting for purposes that are wholly or mainly outside that individual's trade, business, craft or profession. A company, a partnership, a school, a landlord and a management company are none of those things when they commission work on premises they run. The repeat performance and price reduction remedies that a homeowner can rely on therefore do not apply to a commercial decorating contract, and neither does the rule that an unfair term is not binding.

What applies instead, in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, is section 13 of the Supply of Goods and Services Act 1982: in a relevant contract for the supply of a service where the supplier is acting in the course of a business, there is an implied term that the supplier will carry out the service with reasonable care and skill. Part II of that Act does not extend to Scotland, where the equivalent obligation comes from Scots common law, so a Scottish contract should spell the standard out rather than assume it. In every jurisdiction the practical answer is the same: write the specification down, because in a business contract the written scope carries far more weight than any implied term.

Payment has its own statute. GOV.UK states that where no payment date is agreed the law treats payment as late 30 days after the customer receives the invoice or the service is provided, and that the interest a business can charge another business is statutory interest of 8% plus the Bank of England base rate. Section 5A of the Late Payment of Commercial Debts (Interest) Act 1998 adds a fixed sum on top: £40 for a debt under £1,000, £70 for a debt of £1,000 or more but less than £10,000, and £100 for a debt of £10,000 or more, plus reasonable recovery costs above that sum. Contractors quote differently once they know a client pays to terms.

Height is where most commercial decorating risk sits, and regulation 6 of the Work at Height Regulations 2005 sets the order in which it has to be dealt with. Work is not to be carried out at height where it is reasonably practicable to do the work safely otherwise than at height; where it must be done at height, sufficient work equipment must be provided for preventing a fall so far as is reasonably practicable; and where a fall cannot be prevented, the distance and consequences of a fall must be minimised. That hierarchy is why a competent contractor prices a tower or a platform for a stairwell or an atrium instead of a longer ladder, and why extendable poles and a scissor lift appear on a tender that looked over-specified.

The occupied-building problem is the other half. Solvent smell, noise, trailing leads, wet floors and the public walking through a work area are all foreseeable, and the arrangements for them belong in the construction phase plan rather than in a conversation on the morning. Agree who locks off which rooms, how the public route is separated, where materials are stored overnight, whether fire alarm zones need isolating and who reinstates them, and what happens to the work if the building has to be evacuated.

Two hazards deserve naming in a tender for an older commercial building. Textured decorative coatings and other pre-2000 materials raise the asbestos question, which is covered in the handyman guide on this site and belongs in the client's pre-construction information rather than in a decorator's risk assessment written on site. Old paint layers on steel windows, stairs and joinery raise the lead question, which the wallpaper removal guide on this site deals with in detail. Both are cheaper to settle before tender than after a contractor has mobilised.

A great deal of commercial decorating is not bought because someone wanted a new colour. It is bought because a lease says so. Commercial leases commonly require internal redecoration in a stated year of the term and again in the final year, sometimes to a specified standard and sometimes subject to the landlord's approval of colours. A tenant who redecorates early, in the wrong colour, or in a finish the landlord will not accept, can end up paying twice.

In England and Wales there is a statutory backstop worth knowing about before a dilapidations claim is settled. Section 18(1) of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1927 provides that damages for breach of a covenant to keep or put premises in repair during the currency of a lease shall in no case exceed the amount by which the value of the reversion in the premises is diminished owing to the breach, and that no damages are recoverable for breach of a covenant to leave or put premises in repair at the end of a lease if the premises would shortly afterwards have been pulled down, or structurally altered in a way that would render the repairs valueless. Section 18 applies to England and Wales; Scotland and Northern Ireland treat the question differently, and dilapidations advice there is a job for a surveyor and a solicitor rather than a decorator.

For communal areas in a block of flats the constraint is different again. The work is usually instructed by a managing agent and paid for through the service charge, which means consultation obligations, leaseholder scrutiny of the specification and a real incentive for the agent to keep a written record of what was priced. If you are a leaseholder rather than the instructing party, the specification and the tender list are the documents to ask for.

Access and timing move a commercial number far more than area does. Working at night, at weekends or in a holiday shutdown carries a premium; so does a stairwell or an atrium that needs a tower, a platform or a scaffold instead of a step ladder. After that it is the preparation standard, the number of coats and the specification of the coatings, whether furniture, stock and equipment are moved by the contractor or by you, how many phases the building has to be handed over in, whether the contract carries any CDM coordination duties, and whether the client can give the contractor a clear run or a series of interrupted evenings. The presence of an asbestos register and a clear set of pre-construction information also shortens a tender, because a contractor who has to price uncertainty prices it high.

LokalMatch only makes the introduction. Post the job once with the postcode, the building type, the areas involved and the access window you can actually offer, and commercial decorators covering that area contact you directly. Posting costs the person asking nothing, and the professionals pay for the requests that come to them. LokalMatch does not carry out the decorating, does not set prices and does not vet, rank or recommend any contractor who replies, so comparing specifications, insurance and health and safety documentation remains your job.