Installer Vetting Scorecard

Verify six things from primary sources rather than from a capabilities deck. That the contractor licence is active, correctly classified, and held by the exact legal entity you will contract with. That general liability and workers' compensation are active, with you named as certificate holder. That bonding is in place where the state requires it. That installation capacity is genuinely available rather than theoretically available. That the workmanship warranty is written, term-specified and owed by an identifiable entity. And that the business is financially durable enough to still exist when that warranty is called on.

Five, and they cluster in licence, insurance and warranty. The licence must be active, in a classification that covers solar and electrical work in that state, and held by the entity on the agreement. General liability and workers' compensation must be confirmed for everyone who will be on the roof, including subcontracted crews. And the workmanship warranty must exist in writing with an identified legal entity behind it. Each of these is something you cannot verify after an incident, which is what makes it non-negotiable rather than merely important.

Because the licence holder is normally the contractor of record. The party that pulls the permit, answers to the authority having jurisdiction, and carries responsibility for the installed system. A licence held by an affiliated company, a predecessor entity, or an individual rather than the contracting business does not cover the contracting business. It is the most commonly skipped check in installer vetting and one of the few that can invalidate the entire accountability chain.

Ask for installs completed per week over the last quarter rather than crew count. Crew count is a headcount; completed installs are throughput, and the ratio between them varies enormously between companies. Then establish what share of that throughput is already committed to other partners, what the current backlog in weeks is from notice to proceed to install date, and where your projects sit in the priority order when capacity is tight. That last question is far easier to ask before capacity is tight than after.

They are separate obligations owed by separate parties. Module and inverter warranties cover product defect and, for modules, performance degradation. They are obligations of the manufacturers. The workmanship warranty covers the installation itself: mounting, penetrations, roof integrity at those penetrations, wiring and labour. It is owed by the installing contractor. When a homeowner calls about a leak, it is the workmanship warranty that answers, which is why the entity behind it matters more than its term.

No, and it is not designed to be. A surety bond is a financial guarantee that pays a limited class of claimants up to a limited amount if the contractor fails to meet its legal or contractual obligations. Required amounts are set by state and are frequently modest relative to the value of work in flight. Verify a bond exists where the state requires one, then treat insurance, a durable workmanship warranty and the contractor's financial durability as the protection that actually matters.

Licence and insurance status should be re-verified on a diarised schedule, because licences expire and policies lapse, being named as certificate holder on the insurance is what turns a one-day snapshot into an ongoing check. Capacity questions are worth re-running quarterly, since throughput and committed share move faster than anything else on the list. Warranty terms and financial durability warrant a look at contract renewal or on any ownership change.