What to Check Before Hiring a Strata Painter in Melbourne
An owners corporation repaint is often the largest contract a committee will award in a decade, and the people awarding it are volunteers doing it in their own time. That is a difficult combination, and it is why the quotes stage gets so much attention while the question of who the contractor actually is gets less. Price matters, and there is a separate guide on this site to comparing strata painting quotes properly. This one is about the checks that come before price: whether the painter is fit to be on your building at all.
Registration and licensing
In Victoria, painting and decorating work above a certain contract value must be carried out by a registered building practitioner, or under the supervision of one, and a domestic building contract is required for residential work above that threshold. Most strata repaints are well over it. Ask the contractor for the name and registration number of the registered practitioner responsible for the work, and check it against the Victorian Building Authority register. A contractor who is vague about this is telling you something.
Insurance, and reading it properly
Three policies matter. Public liability, to cover damage to the building, residents' property or the public. Workers compensation, because painters on swing stages and scaffolds get hurt, and an uninsured injury on your building becomes your problem. And, where the contract value requires it, domestic building insurance.
Do not settle for a statement that the contractor is insured. Ask for the certificates of currency, check that the policy periods cover the expected duration of the work, check that the insured entity is the same company you are contracting with, and check the public liability limit is adequate for a multi-storey building. It is routine for a committee or its manager to keep copies on file.
Safe-work systems and height access
Strata painting is high-risk work in the legal sense. Most of it happens at height, on scaffolds, swing stages, boom lifts or ropes, above residents, cars and footpaths. Ask how the contractor manages that. A competent one will have safe work method statements for the access method they propose, will be able to explain who is licensed to operate the equipment, and will have a plan for the exclusion zones under the work area. The access methods used on strata repaints are covered in more detail elsewhere on this site; the point here is that the contractor should be able to talk about them fluently and produce the paperwork.
If the building has asbestos in its register, or is old enough that it might, ask how the contractor handles surfaces that may contain it. Sanding an asbestos-cement soffit is not an acceptable answer.
Experience on buildings like yours
A painter who does beautiful work on period homes is not necessarily the right contractor for a fourteen-storey Southbank tower, and the reverse is also true. Ask for recent examples of buildings of similar size, height and construction, ideally within Melbourne, and ask whether you can speak to the committee or manager who engaged them. A contractor with a track record on strata work will have those references ready and will not be offended by the request.
How they deal with residents
This is the part that generates complaints, and it separates strata specialists from general painters. A repaint disrupts every resident in the building for weeks: balconies unusable, windows covered, noise, painters visible at bedroom windows. Ask how the contractor communicates with residents, what notice they give, how they handle balconies with furniture and plants, what hours they work and how they deal with a resident who is difficult. A contractor who has done this before will have a resident notice template and a process. One who has not will improvise, and the committee will hear about it.
Scope, specification and what is excluded
A quote that says repaint the building is not a scope. The specification should say which surfaces, what preparation, what products, how many coats, and what is excluded. It should say how remedial work such as render repair and remedial preparation is priced when it is found, because it will be found. It should say who supplies and pays for access equipment and whether that is included or a separate line. A contractor who produces a thin quote for a large job is either inexperienced or leaving room to charge later.
Warranty and who stands behind it
Ask what warranty the contractor offers on workmanship, how long it runs, what it excludes and who honours it if the company is no longer trading. Ask separately what the paint manufacturer warrants and whether the contractor is applying the product in a way that keeps that warranty valid. There is a fuller guide to strata painting warranties on this site; the short version is that a warranty is only as good as the company behind it.
The contract
For residential work above the threshold, a written domestic building contract in the required form is not optional. It protects the owners corporation as much as the contractor. It should reflect the specification, the price, the payment schedule, the program, the variation process and the warranty. A contractor who wants to work on a quote and a handshake is not one to engage on a building with forty owners.
Red flags
A price far below the others without a clear reason. Reluctance to provide registration or insurance certificates. No safe work documentation. No strata references. A company registered last year. Pressure to sign quickly to hold a price. None of these is proof of a problem on its own, and two or three together usually are.
What we provide
We work on strata and body corporate buildings across Melbourne, and we expect committees to ask for all of the above. Our owners corporation quoting and compliance process is built around giving a committee the documentation it needs to make a defensible decision and to answer the owners who ask why this contractor was chosen. If your committee is at the stage of shortlisting painters, we are happy to be measured against this list.