Commercial
What is loss and damage?
Loss and damage charges cover scaffold material that does not come back from site, or comes back unusable. They are billed against the difference between what was delivered and what was returned.
Scaffold material walks. Boards get used as ramps, fittings disappear into other trades' vans, tubes get cut. On a long job the attrition is significant, and it is only chargeable if both ends of it were counted.
Which is the practical problem. A charge for forty missing boards is a negotiation unless there is a delivery record and a return count, at which point it is arithmetic.
It is also a stock problem before it is a commercial one. Material that is unaccounted for is material the yard thinks it has, which is how the next job ends up short on the morning it is due to start.
What goes wrong on site
- Delivery quantities recorded on a ticket that nobody keeps.
- Returns counted approximately, so the shortfall is arguable.
- Damage noted verbally at the yard and never attached to the job it came off.