For playground owners, choosing a quality playground construction company for your next playground project can be an ominous task. Whether you are a director of a large city or county park system or a one-time playground purchaser, knowing the qualifications of your selected installation company in advance is something that should not be left to chance.
Writing installation requirements right in your bid specifications is a great way to ensure you hire a qualified playground contractor. Some specifications call for the supply and installation of equipment from a single vendor. Other times a bid specification will call for a playground sales firm to sell the equipment and then an independent playground contractor to bid installation of the equipment.
Think about it: a homeowner preparing to build a house will purchase windows, for example, through the window distributor. Installation of the windows, however, is contracted between the homeowner and a GC, not the window distributor.
Of course, there are window distributors that have in-house installers just as there are playground distributors that have in-house installation crews. In either case, when a bid for the installation of equipment comes out you should think about specifying the following minimum requirements of the installer:
- Provide proof of NPSI certification
- Provide proof of liability insurance and workers compensation
- Provide proof of being licensed to operate in the state they are doing business.*
- Provide proof of certification
- Certified with the NPCAI Contractors School
- Certified with the selected equipment manufacturer
It is not a coincidence that the requirements to become an NPCAI Qualified Contractor are identical to this bid specification. One of the primary benefits of being an NPCAI member is the service of becoming an NPCAI Qualified Contractor. On the members’ behalf, the NPCAI maintains a database of information on each Qualified Contractor. Stored in this database are all the minimum bid specification requirements you see listed above.
It is a playground owner’s, public or private, duty to honor and obey state or local licensing requirements. You should ask for documentation of compliance with any registration or licensing that a contractor may be required to obtain in order to conduct business as a contractor in your state or city.
All builders supply risk management to the clients they work for in the form of insurance, including liability and workers' compensation. Playground owners, in turn, must manage risk by getting documentation of compliance from their builders.
The credential for understanding playground rules and guidelines is playground inspector certification from the National Playground Safety Institute, NPSI. Any installer of playground equipment should have this credential as a minimum requirement.
Many playground manufacturers offer an in-house training and certification program. Good sense on the part of a playground owner may be to require this certification in order to install your playground equipment.
When playground owners see the NPCAI Qualified Contractor logo, they know the builder participates in the NPCAI Qualified Contractor’s program that offers third-party documentation of a qualified contractor’s credentials. Just think of all the time and paperwork it saves. Choosing an NPCAI Qualified Contractor is like one-stop shopping where playground owners can view a snapshot of company qualifications and compliance with everything a good bid specification asks. Such contractors are known to uphold these and other good risk management practices and can usually be depended on to supply great service and quality construction.
