Hiring a Sewer Contractor for Commercial Property

What makes the commercial hire different

A homeowner hires once and lives with the result. A property manager hires on behalf of an owner, under a management agreement that spells out spending authority, with tenants whose leases promise working plumbing and a lender whose loan documents may require notice of any excavation. The contractor you choose has to fit inside that structure. That means paper the residential customer never asks for: a certificate of insurance naming the owner, a lien waiver with each payment, a schedule the tenants can be told about, and a scope the owner's engineer can read. It also means the contractor must be comfortable being one vendor among several, coordinating with the plumber who maintains the interior, the paving company that will restore the lot and the utility that inspects the connection.

The properties, and what each one demands

• Restaurants and food service. Grease is the whole story. The contractor needs to show how the line will be cleaned to bare wall before any repair, how the grease will be captured rather than flushed downstream to the city's interceptor, and how the kitchen keeps operating. Ask whether they have worked under a health department's eye before; the inspector will not wait for the cure.
• Multifamily. Vertical stacks serve every unit above the defect, and a horizontal collector in the garage ceiling serves the whole building. The scope has to say which units lose service, for how long, and how residents will be notified. A contractor who cannot answer that has not done an occupied building.
• Hospitality and health care. Nothing closes. Work is phased by floor or by wing, often at night, and the contractor should be able to produce a sequencing plan before the price, not after.
• Retail and office. The pipe is under parking. The bid must include traffic control, protection of the lot, and restoration to the owner's paving standard, with the tenants' delivery hours worked around.

Night work and bypass pumping

Any commercial sewer repair that cuts off flow needs a plan for the flow while the pipe is open or curing. On a short lateral that may be a few hours after closing. On a shared main it means bypass pumping: a pump upstream, a hose or temporary pipe around the work, discharge downstream, and a standby pump in case the first one quits at two in the morning. The bid should name the pump sizes, the hours, who monitors the bypass and what happens if it fails. Night and weekend work carries a premium; it should appear as a line, not be discovered in the invoice. Ask the contractor for a written notice you can send tenants, with the dates, the hours and a phone number that reaches someone on the night crew.

Insurance: the certificate is not the policy

Require a certificate of insurance before mobilization and read it. General liability limits should match what the management agreement or the lender requires. Confirm workers' compensation is in force, because a crew in a trench on your property without it becomes your claim. Then ask for the additional-insured endorsement itself, not just a box checked on the certificate, naming the ownership entity and the management company, with primary and noncontributory wording if your counsel wants it. A certificate expires; so set a reminder to collect the renewal if the job runs past the date. For excavation near a building, ask whether the policy excludes subsidence or damage to the structure above the work; some do.

Prevailing wage, where it reaches

Prevailing wage rules normally attach to public money, but commercial projects can be caught: a building with a public tenant, a redevelopment with tax-increment financing, a housing property under a public subsidy, or a job that includes work in the public right-of-way under some city ordinances. If any public dollars or public ground are involved, ask the funding agency or the city whether the wage determination applies, and make the bidder certify that their price reflects it. A low bid that ignored a wage requirement will be corrected by someone, and the correction lands on the owner.

Comparing bids that do not look alike

Commercial bids arrive in different shapes: one priced by the foot, one lump sum, one with cleaning as a separate line and one with it folded in. Before comparing numbers, make them comparable. Put every bidder on the same camera footage, ideally a survey of the whole system coded reach by reach, and ask each to break the price into the same buckets: cleaning, access, the repair itself by method and length, reinstating connections, bypass, restoration, permits and inspections, and traffic control. The bid guide lists what each bucket must contain. Then look at what is excluded; in commercial work the exclusions are where the money hides. Unknown utilities, rock, contaminated soil and "additional cleaning if required" are legitimate exclusions when they are priced as unit rates and dangerous when they are open-ended.

When two bids propose different methods, lining against bursting, or either against excavation, the argument should be about the footage, not about preference. Ask each bidder to explain, on the video, why the other method would not work. The relining, bursting and open-cut hiring guides lay out what each proposal must contain.

Licensing and the right trade

A commercial job can involve three licensed trades: the plumber for pipe inside the building, the sewer or utility contractor for pipe in the ground, and a general contractor if the work opens walls, floors or structure. Verify each license on the state register and confirm the classification covers the work being done. Some states require the company's license to be in the name of the entity on the contract, not a qualifying individual who has since moved on. Your state guide names the board and the classes. Permit responsibility should sit with the contractor in writing, and inspection sign-offs should be delivered with the invoice.

Warranties and maintenance plans

A commercial warranty should name the reaches it covers by the same stationing used in the survey, say whether it covers labor and materials, state the term and spell out what voids it. Grease is the usual exclusion on a restaurant line, which is fair only if the contractor also tells you the cleaning interval that keeps the warranty alive. That leads to the maintenance plan: a camera survey on a schedule, cleaning of the lines that need it, and a written condition report the owner can budget from. A contractor who proposes one is thinking like an asset manager. Make sure the plan's pricing is fixed for its term and that the survey footage belongs to the owner, not the contractor.

Property manager's checklist

1. Confirm spending authority and notice obligations under the management agreement and the loan.
2. Commission a recorded camera survey of the affected system and keep the files.
3. Confirm the ownership line with the utility: private main, shared main or public.
4. Verify every license on the state register; match the class to the work.
5. Collect the certificate of insurance and the additional-insured endorsement before mobilization.
6. Ask about prevailing wage if any public money or public ground is involved.
7. Normalize the bids into the same buckets; read the exclusions first.
8. Require a sequencing plan, a bypass plan and a tenant notice in writing.
9. Collect lien waivers with each payment and the permit sign-offs with the final one.
10. File the warranty with the survey footage and the post-work video.

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