ABOUT THE CLAIM
When a surety company received a warranty-related claim on a performance bond they had written, Guardian Group’s Surety Group was called in to help assess and ameliorate the situation. The principal was a concrete contractor who had won the city’s pool project. Not long after project completion, the municipality-obligee began receiving reports from residents as well as making their own observations regarding the pool area’s extensive decking. Not only was the ground beneath users’ feet not slip-resistant, it actually seemed to be slip-encouraging and hyper-smooth. Amidst an onslaught of complaints from the city, the contractor closed his company.
ABOUT THE INVESTIGATION
Guardian’s seasoned surety claim consultant deployed to the scene and was similarly shocked by the slipperiness of the decking. He called in a trusted, local specialist who confirmed his suspicions about an improperly executed coating job. The concrete contractor was accustomed to more standard pours; he hadn’t really been a “pool pro” and this accounted for his naivete.
ABOUT THE RESOLUTION
There was no simple “removal” of the faulty coating as a remedy. The job needed to be removed and re-done. The optimal solution for the (risk and litigation-averse) city wasn’t an anti-slip coating over concrete at all. Rather, Guardian’s specialist reasoned, they should utilize a purpose-engineered tile on all of the decking. This would alleviate their fears, but since this tiling would cost twice the amount the originally contract called for, the surety and the obligee would need to come together on the proposed solution. Guardian helped orchestrate an agreement between the parties that saved the surety hundreds of thousands of dollars; they had to only cover the cost of a replacement of the original and the city would cover the upgrade to a much finer standard of slip-resistance.
ABOUT GUARDIAN GROUP
From expert support on your small, every day contract and commercial claims to complex takeovers, Guardian puts its technical and investigations experience to work for surety claims people, helping them resolve their claims swiftly and cost-effectively. Whether you require support on a single small claim, a single large claim, or on hundreds of simultaneous claims of any size or type, Guardian Group is engineered to deliver you more. Kindly call on Guardian today.