Published 27 July 2026
Adding a contractor to a panel is a small decision that becomes a large one. If they’re good, they quietly absorb a category of work you stop having to think about. If they’re not, you find out through an owner complaint, an insurance question, or a job that stalls halfway with nobody answering the phone.
Here’s what’s actually worth checking — and, because we’d rather be judged on this than talk around it, where we sit on each one.
1. Insurance: get the certificate, and read the dates
Ask for a certificate of currency for public liability, and check three things:
- The expiry date. Certificates lapse. A contractor who sends one from eighteen months ago either isn’t organised or isn’t covered.
- The name on it matches the entity that will invoice you.
- The cover amount meets whatever your firm requires.
If they’ll be working on common property, ask whether the policy has any relevant exclusions.
The real tell isn’t whether they have insurance — most do. It’s how long it takes them to send it. A contractor who works with agencies has it in a folder and sends it in ten minutes.
Us: public liability insured and ABN registered. Certificate on request, same day.
2. Licensing: know what actually requires one
This is where vetting goes wrong in both directions.
There is no handyman licence in NSW. It doesn’t exist. So anyone advertising as a “licensed handyman” is describing a credential that isn’t real — which tells you something about how carefully they describe everything else.
What genuinely does require a licence:
- Electrical work
- Plumbing, drainage and gasfitting
- Structural building work, and residential building work over the NSW threshold value
A good maintenance contractor should be able to tell you, without hesitating, which items on a list they can’t touch and why. That answer is more useful than a licence number, because it tells you they know where their edge is.
Us: we don’t claim a licence that doesn’t exist. Where a job needs a licensed trade we identify it in the scope up front and either coordinate one or hand the item back — your call.
3. Documentation: the real differentiator
Almost any contractor can do the work. Far fewer can hand you something you can forward without rewriting it.
Ask to see a sample scope and a sample completion report. What you want:
- Line-by-line pricing, so an owner can approve or strike individual items
- Reporting structured against your format — your defect schedule, your condition report — not their own
- Photos on completion, item by item, not a general “all done”
- For damage work, photos taken before anything is touched
That last one matters more than it sounds. Once a property is cleaned up, nobody can evidence what it looked like — which is the difference between a defensible bond claim or insurance position and an argument.
If a contractor can’t show you a sample, they don’t do it routinely.
Us: itemised scopes, reporting back in whatever structure you sent, before-and-after photos as standard on every job.
4. Scope: how many phone calls does this replace?
The genuine cost of a contractor isn’t their hourly rate. It’s how many separate people you have to coordinate around them.
A property between tenants typically needs repairs, a clean, rubbish out and the garden reset. Four contractors means four quotes, four schedules, four invoices, and a critical path where each waits on the last — usually turning a two-week job into five.
Ask what they cover directly, what they coordinate, and what they don’t do at all. Wanting a straight answer to the third one is the point. A contractor who claims to do everything is either overstating it or spread too thin.
Us: repairs, defects, make-ready, tenant damage clean-up, grounds, pressure washing, rubbish removal, turf, flat-pack and pool barrier rectification directly. Interior, carpet and flood clean-up coordinated through a cleaning partner. Licensed trades referred, not attempted.
5. Responsiveness: test it before you need it
The most predictive check available, and it costs you nothing.
Send a real enquiry and time the response. How someone behaves while competing for your work is the best version of how they’ll behave once they have it.
Then ask about the things that actually break a working relationship:
- How long from enquiry to quote?
- How long from approval to on site?
- What happens when they open something up and find a bigger problem — do they stop and re-quote, or proceed and add it to the invoice?
- Who do you call when something goes wrong, and is it a person or a queue?
The third question is worth asking directly. A contractor who says “we’d tell you before doing the extra work” and means it saves you the worst conversation in this job.
Us: itemised quote within 24 hours, most jobs booked inside the week. If we find something underneath, work stops and you get a revised scope before anything else happens.
6. Capacity and continuity
Small contractors are usually better on care and worse on capacity. Large ones are the reverse. Neither is wrong — but know which you’re getting.
- Can they take three jobs at once, or does the second wait?
- What happens if they’re sick or away?
- Are they local to the properties, or driving an hour each way?
Local matters more than people expect on maintenance work, because the jobs are small and frequent. A contractor twenty minutes away will come back to adjust a gate. One an hour away won’t, not really.
Us: based in Glenmore Park, working Western Sydney and the lower Blue Mountains. Most jobs are within twenty minutes.
7. References from someone like you
Not testimonials — references. Ask for a property manager or strata manager they work with regularly, and ask that person one question: what happens when something goes wrong?
Anyone looks good on a job that goes well. What you’re buying is behaviour on the ones that don’t.
The short version
- Current public liability certificate, correct entity, in date
- ABN registered
- Clear on what needs a licensed trade and what they’ll refer
- Sample itemised scope
- Sample completion report with photos
- Will report in your format
- Photographs damage before touching it
- Written scope of what they do / coordinate / don’t do
- Quote turnaround time, in writing
- Stated policy on variations found mid-job
- Local enough to come back for a snag
- One reference from a manager like you
If you’re building a panel
One practical suggestion: trial a new contractor on a mid-sized job, not a small one. A small job tells you almost nothing — anyone can change a gate latch. A mid-sized one with several items and a deadline tells you about sequencing, communication, and whether the documentation is real.
We’re happy to be tested that way.
Insurance certificate, sample scope and sample completion report available on request — call 0494 301 215 or send a trade enquiry.