Commercial work

[Calamity joe]

What’s needed for commercial work . What insurance is best ? Do you need certain health and safety certificates .

Any help is greatly appreciated TIA

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[spruce]

What’s needed for commercial work . What insurance is best ? Do you need certain health and safety certificates .

Any help is greatly appreciated TIA

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Honestly my advise is to stick with residential.

http://www.hse.gov.uk/risk/faq.htm

This will tell you all about Risk and Method assessments.

Commercial may seem like good money but you could have it today and tomorrow its gone.  You can expect to spend time chasing payments and play cat and mouse with accounts department employees. Most have payment terms of 30 days which somehow become 60 or 90 days.

 

[Redditch windy]

commercial is better money,but losing a couple of clients can mean taking a big hit; whereas residential pays a little less,but a smaller hit if you lose one or two and easier to replace

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[windowsurfer]

Good thing about commercial is it can be usually done before you can do residential, so just view it as extra money n if u lose it,then u have residential to save you. Just dont take on too much maybe an hour or two before you start normal work. 

 

[Daniel Perkins]

Public Liability Insurance first off, most seem to be asking for 6.5m these days.. 2.5m used to suffice... I'm in Ireland so i'm not sure the criteria over in the UK. Then certain stores will ask for Method Statements & Risk Assessments, which are easy. There are templates everywhere and you just equate it to you but I rarely get asked for them. Like any market, commercial has its ups and downs but there is work everywhere. Just look around you when you are driving about, it's endless so there will always be work out there for you. Price wise, it can go either way if i'm being honest, for me (I"m all commercial) the bigger brands or chains are the worst to deal with. Spruce & Redditch are spot on, you are just a another number to these guys, payment can be put on the back burner every 2 or 3 months.. that's pretty standard with me but I always get paid & try to spread your work around and not put all your eggs in one basket so to speak as if you lose it you will feel it massively (Made that mistake before). The management working in the stores can be sometimes under a lot of pressure from the bosses & can be awkward to deal with. What I would disagree with is that in any profession you can have it today and be gone tomorrow, being self employed comes with pressure and stress it can be a tough game.

As regards the big commercial stores though, I have certain stores which pay very well or others not so well, it's all relative to how hard the job is, location, frequency etc as to how you calculate a decent value.  These guys though have much higher overheads than say an independent store, so IMO they are always look for a cut price or alot of them will get a big national to do all their stores, alot of them will put it out for tender every year too which is a pain. Essentially you end up working harder for less money & you know the job will be up for grabs to cheapest price every bloody year.. which is not ideal. My advice would be avoid them and start with the smaller stores, it's more personal, work is usually easier, you are a face and not just a number & price is usually better value in most cases. Also customers will see you working and you can easily pick up residential work over time the more familiar to get to these people.

Agree with post above also, get out early, get the job done and then push on to residential work and still be at a reasonable time to get in a solid days work.

 

[dmw]

Honestly my advise is to stick with residential.
 
http://www.hse.gov.uk/risk/faq.htm
 
This will tell you all about Risk and Method assessments.
 
Commercial may seem like good money but you could have it today and tomorrow its gone.  You can expect to spend time chasing payments and play cat and mouse with accounts department employees. Most have payment terms of 30 days which somehow become 60 or 90 days.

I'm pretty much with Spruce, I'm roughly 80% residential I've done a couple long term Care Homes a couple of years ago one got taken over by a big company and switched my payment terms from 30 to 90 days payment and were a pain to deal with so I binned that job.
Last year a Salvation Army Church I did (lots of glass) I also binned off after I had to go to head office in London rather than being paid cash on the day. When they eventually paid me the seven months cash they owed me I walked.
And upto today another Care Home I've been doing for 26 years has recently changed hands and they'd like a "chat" with me when the new owner comes back from his holiday in Pakistan and this doesn't bode well.
So I'm not too keen on Commercial at the minute, I've found the best people are residential customers who own Commercial properties,if you do a good job on their house they'll pay well for you to work on their businesses.
Ultimately, as said before keep a good spread of Commercial and Residential customers and don't put all your eggs in the same basket.

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[Iron Giant]

I prefer residential work as it's bread and butter money you know when you are getting paid and it's virtually guaranteed work all the time.

Extra money and early starts before an acceptable starting time for residential for me is a pain after 18 years+, I can get up early enough it's getting out of the door I would rather start later and work the hours I want.

County Durham Lad
 

 

[Leeds]

commercial is a very broad term. One window on a corner shop is commercial, and so is the Shard in central London. What are you looking for? Specific answers get specific questions ?

 

[Teaboy]

To my knowledge there are no true commercial guys on here, you need a good mix in both they both have benefits and pitfalls.

Our insurance has just been renewed for £10m sometimes you get forms/questionaires/contracts/ expected flexibility.

Domestic is much easier which is why everyone focuses on that


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[Pjj]

What’s needed for commercial work . What insurance is best ? Do you need certain health and safety certificates .

Any help is greatly appreciated TIA

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Dont listen to all the negative negative comments about commercial work on hear yes it can be cut throat but all of our best paying jobs are commercial, you will need to supply rams and most will require you to have minimum of 5 million puplic liability insurance and some will want you to have a health and safety qualification such as iosh or similar : if you get the opportunity to quote for commercial work go for it we have never regretted doing so and price it well if you get it it’s a bonus if you don’t nothing lost by commercial Ime not talking about shops but big hotels , etc this type of thing : payment has never been a problem you are the supplier you state the terms of payment not them all our commercial work is payment due within a maximum of 28 days of invoice date we work for some very large national company’s and in best part of 20 years have only had one problem with payment on time , I much prefer commercial work to domestic but it’s safer to have a mixture if you loose a large job it is a big hit but loosing a few houses is no big deal : we travel up to 200 miles from home for some of out work and it’s very lucrative you just need to get your foot in the door with the right companies and do a good job we charge 3 times what our competitors have priced jobs at but we still have the contracts beacause we are reliable , turn up when we should , and do a first class job every time that’s why we have kept these contracts for over 15 years 

 

[Part Timer]

My best work is residential windows for a Property Management Company, so strictly it is Commercial. This work, in my opinion, is the best work, residential or commercial, you can get, as long as you do a good job. The residents want a good job done and the Manager wants no complaints. Very hard to get into though, and you might need to be very keen to initially get into. However once you are then the better work follows. 

 

[windowgleamtrowbridge]

Just make sure you’re up on top in google. Have a dedicated area for commercial on your website. Have some google reviews too. They like to see that people like you!

Done a couple of commercial jobs, one admittedly messed me around in the end and didn’t sack off the old windy so we were both doing it! Day after eachother... so just sack them off earlier if you have issues like that!

I got some for a property management company though and just quoted up two very large brand new retirement flats for McCarthy and Stone. Just waiting to hear back on Thursday from them!

The tenants have of the property management company had a load of issues with the old windy not turning up and doing a bad job etc. They also have a serial complainer, who complained I didn’t use any chemicals or soap on the windows. Gave a great reply and even offered to go back if they weren’t happy with the clean. But they didn’t want me to in the end! Surprise...

I think there is a mixed bag of quality with the work out there. They want to pay the least they can. Not for the best job they can sometimes! Just bare that in mind when you quote. Don’t be disheartened if you don’t pick any or much up.


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