The Bahamian Contractors Association’s (BCA) president says resolving the “huge amount of ambiguity” surrounding construction contracts will help slash consumer complaints about the sector.

Leonard Sands, responding to the Consumer Protection Commission’s disclosure that the construction industry is subject to the second-highest level of client complaints it receives, said that while some grievances over shoddy workmanship and over-priced work are valid most of the disputes stem from contractual issues.

He added that, in his experience, most disputes stem from a misunderstanding about the contract governing the relationship between the two parties. “I think it’s kind of interesting,” said Mr Sands. “One side of the complaint could be as easy as an owner or persons believing that they got shoddy work and, in fact, they may have gotten shoddy work.

“The other side of the complaint can be from the contractors, when in a lot of instances they don’t get paid for work that they do perform. I think this presents an opportunity, if we work together, for both sides to come and kind of do some education.”

Mr Sands said many times clients will become upset with contractors when they realise the scope of work they expected was not included in the contract. This leads to them “butting heads” about the business arrangement.

“Most of the time we hear from our contractors, the person engaged them to do ‘X’, and then they ask them to do ‘x, y and z’, and get very upset if they don’t do ‘x, y and z’ when the contractors were contracted to do ‘x’,” said Mr Sands.

“If you ask me to build your wall, and I give you a price to build your wall, and then you tell me I wanted the wall ten feet tall rather than five foot tall, you should have told me the height of the wall you wanted.

“Persons like to say the contractor should contract better. This is an instance where the person desiring work should have contracted better and clearly stated the work they want performed.”

Mr Sands said the BCA is willing to work with the Consumer Protection Commission to reduce consumer complaints and educate the public on the importance of ensuring the work set out in the construction contract is exactly what they would like to see undertaken.

“I think public education is necessary to reduce this number of complaints,” said Mr Sands. “I do know throughout my years in the industry there’s just an abundant amount of ambiguity relating to contracts, and both parties should really sit and determine what they want the relationship to be before anything happens.

“The BCA gets complaints and concerns from both sides all the time, every week, from contractors and clients. We are willing to work together with the Consumer Protection Commission to see if we could reduce this number of complaints and also find a medium so the persons who do feel aggrieved get some kind of remedy.”

The BCA president said the Association frequently receives and intervenes in consumer disputes and, in his experience, most complaints stem from a disagreement about contractual terms. “I have mediated, brought parties together to discuss matters ten times more than Consumer Protection,” said Mr Sands.

“I can tell you, in every instance, the client thought one thing and the contractor thought another thing. If you all sat down and agreed on what it is that both parties were going to do beforehand, none of this would have happened. In certain instances, one party or another did not live up to the obligation, but even that could have been contracted better.”

Mr Sands said the BCA is working to educate its members on the importance of drafting contracts properly and walking away from jobs they find problematic in the negotiation stage.

“Contracting has to be correct first before the engagement of the contractor and the client. That’s where this whole mess happens,” added Mr Sands.

“I think that there’s gross ignorance of what the contract, or what the arrangement, is between the contractor and the client from both the contractor and the client side. The BCA is taking it upon itself to try to educate the contractors on how to contract property, how to do work that they are qualified to do, and how not to do work that they feel they would get in trouble with.”

Mr Sands said the Consumer Protection Commission often acts as a “sword not a shield” for contractors and, while resolving complaints is important, there is no agency that contractors can lodge concerns about clients who do not fulfill their contractual agreement and pay for services rendered.

“Consumer protection mostly acts as a sword and not a shield for the contractor. When we don’t get paid, no one’s out there helping us get paid,” said Mr Sands. “Everyone likes to hear the complaint from a homeowner. They can say he didn’t perform, but from my contractor’s side, I didn’t get paid to do that and who’s batting for me?

“The BCA will fight aggressively to defend the reputation of some of our contractors. We do acknowledge that some of them are at fault. With the ones who are not at fault owed monies, who’s going to help us recover those funds? There’s no agency out there helping us. Maybe there should be Consumer Protection for contractors.

“We don’t disagree that there are some contractors who don’t live up to the obligations, but I also have a dossier of information on contractors who have adopted obligations and then monies were never paid, and there’s no one in addressing those concerns either.”