When a client asks you to skip a permit or cut a corner
Wednesday afternoon, the homeowner meets you in the new ensuite. The shower plumbing is roughed in, the drywallers are booked for Thursday, and the city's first plumbing inspection slot is seven working days away. "Just close it up," she says. "Nobody will know, and I'll sign whatever you want."
Decline plainly, explain the risk to the client's own home and money, and offer a legal way to get what they are after. Permits and inspections let the building department check work against the building code before it is hidden. The client usually wants a date or a saving, not a fight with the city.
What skipping it can cost
- The wall comes open. Toronto, for example, says building elements covered before the related mandatory inspection will have to be uncovered for inspection and passed.
- Fees and delay for the owner. Toronto lists a fee of 50 per cent of the permit fees, subject to a minimum and maximum, a stop while the application is processed, possible removal and possible sale or insurance issues. The homeowner pays even if a contractor said no permit was needed.
- Your licence. California treats failure to obtain a required building permit as a contractor licence violation, with discipline up to suspension or revocation.
- Refuse the shortcut in one sentence, and promise the fastest legal way.
- Ask what is driving it: a date, a cost or a planned visit.
- Explain the risk as theirs, from the building department's own page.
- Offer legal options: ask the building department for its earliest slot or a cancellation, and keep other work moving around the open wall.
- Confirm it in writing that day. If they insist, or want a permit skipped outright, take it to your company's owner; start nothing that needs a permit before it is issued.
In the ensuite
Common mistakes
- Treating the owner's request as permission to skip an inspection.
- Closing the wall while waiting for an inspection answer.
- Refusing without offering a workable permitted sequence.
What to say
What to say when asked
Check your understanding
A client wants the permit left out of your basement bathroom quote, to save the fee. What do you say?
Show the answer
Decline. The fee pays for an inspection of work they will live with, and skipping it leaves them open to extra fees, a stop to the work and having to undo it. Offer a real saving in the scope or the schedule instead, and put your answer in writing.
