Permitting and splitting contracting work between interior + exterior
I’d be interested in feedback from people who have permitted an interior/exterior job (like in our case, adding a deck and kitchen) and then decided to split the work between interior and exterior (or considered then decided against it because of permitting issues). We want to hire someone to do our interior work but he doesn’t do exteriors, and doesn’t want to be responsible for the entire permit so that the deck people we eventually hire technically work under him. Our architect doesn’t think a separately contracted deck firm would pull the entire permit due to the risk of liability for plumbing and electrical from the interior job, so he thinks the interior firm has to own the exterior permit too. So… All this might mean we can’t hire this guy for the interior, and have to go with a more comprehensive contractor who can do the full job and full permit. We prefer not to withdraw the permit application because we have approval already, just need to pull the permit. (it seems silly to do an unpermitted job when we already paid to get a permit). And we strongly prefer not to pay double to effectively split in half the permit application just to hire this guy. I think he would be good and perhaps we would save a few bucks on him to boot, but filing a new permit costs a few thousand and doesn’t seem worth the risk. The guy we want to hire is time+materials with a separate electrician and plumber in the mix (paid directly), so harder to quantify his costs vs the general contractors who are more firm.
jeanmarine2
in Permits 12 years and 2 months ago
5
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5 replies
acdc | 10 years and 4 months ago
Hi everyone, Curious to see how your situations each resolved. We are now facing the same issue, but the other way around, with an interior GC who can’t do structural repair in our extension, and we just hired another GC who will demolish and repair our entire extension. Not sure what it means to our current permits, including one plumbing permit that was filed for the incorrect floor. Thank you for any insight/feedback/suggestions you may have.
robertinho3030 | 12 years and 2 months ago
hi my name is roberto ,i have experiance in interior renovations my cell 1 347 425 3494 call me at any time thank.
deancollins | 12 years and 2 months ago
Lets face it permitting costs and other fixed costs (eg expediter/plan drawing costs) are a joke. There is no reason it should be anywhere near as expensive as it is but for some reason New Yorkers just accept it as a given……
jeanmarine2 | 12 years and 2 months ago
Thanks – interesting. We have now hired the guy who does interiors but not exteriors and is licensed and insured but doesn’t have worker’s compensation because he works with a partner who also insures himself, so there are no workers to comp, for a preliminary job before the big deck/kitchen job. this guy obviously has a small operation and he’s hands-on, more a carpenter who does most everything. But that doesn’t solve the problem of who to hire for the big job, and whether we want to deal with the complexities of splitting the job w/permitting or just hire someone to permit the whole job. it occurred to me to use this guy for as much of the kitchen as possible before turning it over to a more general contractor type to finish and permit with the deck as a 2nd phase. it’s that or we abandon or split the permit and splitting the permit would cost at least a few thousand, apparently, to re-file half the job. but the larger contractors might cost more than a few thousand more anyway, so there isn’t a clearcut answer (yet), so we might slow down and explore the kitchen work with the smaller guy (who gets great reviews by the way, he does kitchens, bookcases, floors, most stuff)
greenmountain | 12 years and 2 months ago
The deck contractor’s comp insurance policy (if any) would cost about 20 percent of payroll, whereas interior finished trades like installing cabinets and tile, cost about 10 percent of payroll. These rates have doubled in only 4 years and continue to climb. So, there is increasing incentive to split interior and exterior work. I am disputing my classification, because the work I do is interior renovation, yet I am asked to pay double as if I build decks or whole buildings. I expect to win my dispute and when I do, I will make this information available to other contractors.