How to Choose a Villa Contractor in Bali

Bali has excellent builders. It also has a large population of intermediaries who take a project, subcontract every trade, mark it up, and disappear the moment the retention money is due. From the outside, on a first meeting, the two look identical. Both have a portfolio, both have renders, both are charming.

Here is how to tell them apart before you pay anyone.

Ask who is actually on the payroll

A construction company has site managers, engineers, quantity surveyors and foremen on staff. A broker has a phone. Ask directly: how many people do you employ, and which of them will be on my site every day? Ask for the name of the project manager who will run your build, and then ask to meet them. If the person selling you the project cannot introduce the person who will build it, you have your answer.

Visit a site that is halfway through

Finished projects are photographed. Live sites are not. A site in the middle of construction tells you almost everything: whether the reinforcement is tied properly, whether the site is tidy, whether the waterproofing is being detailed or just painted on, whether there are twelve people working or two. Ask to visit one unannounced. A good builder will be pleased. Note the reaction.

Look at what they build, not what they render

Ask for three villas they have completed in the last two years, and ask to speak to those owners without the contractor present. Ask those owners three questions: did it finish on time, what did the variations add up to, and what happened when something failed after handover. The third question is the important one.

Read the contract for the part about failure

Anyone will tell you what happens when things go well. The contract should say what happens when they do not:

• A defects liability period, in writing, with a stated duration and a stated scope. Ask specifically whether structure and waterproofing are covered, and for how long.
• Retention. A percentage of each payment held back until after handover is normal and protects you. A contractor who refuses it is telling you something.
• Milestone payments tied to completed and inspected construction stages, never to dates in a calendar.
• A variation procedure — how a change is priced and approved before it is built, not after.
• Liquidated damages for late completion, or at the very least a stated completion date that means something.

Check the company is a company

Ask to see the PT's deed and its NIB, and check the business classification actually covers construction. Ask who will hold the building approval and who signs it. A contractor that cannot show you its own corporate documents is not going to be reachable when you need a guarantee honoured three years from now.

Be suspicious of the cheapest number

In a market where materials and labour cost roughly the same for everyone, a quote twenty per cent below the others is not efficiency. It is one of three things: a thinner specification you have not noticed, work that will be claimed back later as variations, or a business that is funding this project with the deposit from the next one. All three end the same way.

The questions worth asking in the first meeting

• Who employs the people on my site?
• Can I see a project of yours that is at structure stage right now?
• What is your guarantee, in writing, and what does it exclude?
• How do you price a variation, and who approves it?
• What did your last three projects overrun by, in time and in money?
• Who is liable if the waterproofing fails in year two?

Neptune Property is a construction company that also designs. Our site teams, engineers and project managers are our own employees, our villas carry a structural guarantee of up to ten years, and we are still here to honour it because we develop on this island as well as build on it. If you are comparing contractors, bring us the other quotes — we will tell you what they have left out.