We would like to thank Mr Clegg for his professionalism and industry prowess!
We were on the receiving end of a Fenestration Pathology Report from Fenestrology. We had a Garden room extension go horribly wrong, the company were not interested and seemed fed up with me calling them back time after time. Being a professional was fortunate enough to be able to afford professional advice and I was soon aligned with an industry professional whom was promoted by one of the chartered institutes and who’s CV had me hooked. I paid a £1000 deposit to secure their services and on their first visit I was advised to engage a solicitor to further enhance my case. We took this advice and very soon received a letter from the installing company’s solicitor suggesting that we allow a visit by one of their approved industry experts. Our expert advised that we request he be the single expert in the case, this was later refused and we reluctantly agreed to a visit. We received correspondence from Fenestrology and were advised that Mr Clegg would visit and a time and date agreed.
He arrived on site dressed to work, he did not wear a suit and tie, he wore professional over shoes and made us feel very comfortable from the outset. It was obvious from the minute he walked through the door his passion for his subject. He was very very thorough, he had extension ladders that he used to inspect an area of concern on the roof. He used a thermal image camera and damp meter none of which our ‘expert’ had used. He was on site some two and a half hours and to be honest really filled us with confidence in particularly his professionalism to the core subject matter rather than all the contractual ‘stuff’ that we had grown accustomed too.
We were advised his report would be made available via the solicitors within the month and we eventually received his report. It contained 18 pages, was well laid out and all the photos made perfect sense. He advised of other issues that our own expert had not even picked up one of which related to missing safety glazing!
The report challenged many of the points in our experts report and photos and inserted text from the codes of installation practice proved the fact!
Included as part of the report was a recommended scope of works with step by step instructions as to how the work should be undertaken.
We were given a number of choices – we could have a site meeting of both the experts to thrash out their differences but obviously additional costs were involved. Alternatively we were given the opportunity to have the recommended works undertaken by Fenestrology with these costs met by the installing company. After some thought my wife and I were of the opinion that considering how comfortable we felt with the report and its recommendations we would allow the works to be undertaken. We did however add a caveat in that Mr Clegg needed to be onsite to oversee the works, in the end we agreed to him being on site at the start of the proposed works to advise the operatives what was required.
The works were scheduled and whilst there was a delay in getting said works completed it was due to availability of resource. It was well worth the wait Arron and Stuart represented the company, again I was filled with confidence from the outset. They set up the area at the front of our property with safety signs, cones and red and white tape. They extensively dust sheeted our property and used blue ground sheets outside the immediate area they were working. They knew their stuff and were very polite at all times.
Eventually we got all the works completed to our entire satisfaction, the solicitors thrashed out the compensation and we can hopefully now enjoy our garden room.
The moral of our story – even though we initially felt like we were on the receiving end of the process we actually managed to use this to our advantage. This just goes to show that you can have all the professional badges and letters after your name and by association be a part of the perceived most professional body of surveyors but as Fenestrology quite rightly dropped into the conversation ‘’do they have a fenestration specialism?’’ In our case obviously not! Engage the services of some on that knows their ONIONS…