Chartered Building Consultancy Checkmate.uk.com provides latent defect insurance on a wide variety of building types and tenures across the UK. From 'residential for sale' to 'social housing for rent'; from new business parks, to complex urban renewal and regeneration schemes, Checkmate has an innovative latent defects solution, offered at special discount rates for CBCs.
For almost every endeavour there is a code of some sort that sets out to govern it. The question for Checkmate is, do these codes prove useful in terms of reducing or quantifying the risks associated with the building project in question?
There are codes and codes. Some are entirely voluntary, some stipulated by regulation, and some adhered to as a condition of membership of a profession. Voluntary codes are of little value in quantifying or differentiating risk, as there is no uniform compulsion to adopt them. Statutory codes that we all have to follow may well reduce risks, but for the very reason that they apply to all, don’t help to differentiate between the degrees of risk reduction in the activities they govern.
It is generally accepted that where a professional code is in place, it is realistic to rely on a given level of governance over the activity covered by the professional code and professional body in question. The individual members of that profession adopt those codes as a condition of continued professional membership. In short a professional code provides a useful guide to assessing both the quantity and quality of risk associated with the activity in question. This is particularly true in the case of the construction industry through the CIOB and its Chartered Building Company / Consultancy schemes.
As a Chartered Building Consultancy, Checkmate has gained support for the concept that a Chartered Building Company can be regarded as representing a lower risk to an insurer for latent defects than a non-chartered building business. Checkmate is delighted to offer Chartered Building Companies a 20%* discount from the standard premium element of our invoice. Checkmate’s warranties are available to cover all kinds of building project from new build to conversion, domestic to commercial, and retail. Mixed use developments with multiple tenures can also easily be covered, even where the tenures and uses change within a single structure.
A clear case that adherence to a recognised professional code of conduct reduces risk and in turn insurance premiums!
*Terms and conditions and minimum premiums still apply