A wall moved. The panel location changed after the rough-in was done. Your crew re-pulled circuits 12 through 18, and now there are 14 hours on the job that were already paid for once.
The question every electrical contractor hits here is the same: electrician rework hours — who pays? The answer is not a rate question. It comes down to two things: who caused the redo, and what you can show about the work.
Most rework arguments are not lost on the merits. They are lost because the timesheet says "rework, 8.5 hrs" and nobody on the customer's side can tell what that was or why it happened.
Who Pays for Electrician Rework Hours?
Whoever caused the rework pays for it. If your crew caused it, you eat it under your warranty obligation. If someone else caused it — the owner, the GC, the architect, another trade — it is extra work, and extra work is billable if you documented the cause when it happened.
The trap is the middle case: the cause was real and external, but nothing was written down at the time, so the redo looks the same on paper as a mistake. That line gets written off.
Here is the fork, cause by cause.
| Cause of the redo | Who normally pays | How it's handled | Evidence that settles it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Your crew's defect — miswire, wrong device, install doesn't match approved plans | You | Correction of work / warranty. Not billable. | Track it anyway, internally, so you know your real defect rate. |
| Owner or architect changed the design after your work was in | Owner | Change order or T&M extra | Dated field note naming the change, the RFI/ASI number, and who directed it |
| Drawings were wrong or incomplete | Owner (through the GC) | RFI, then change order | The RFI, the answer, and hours logged against it after the answer came back |
| Another trade damaged or covered your work | That trade | Backcharge to them, through the GC | Same-day note naming the trade and the location, plus photos |
| Inspector correction where the original install matched approved plans | Owner | Change order — the scope changed, not your workmanship | The correction notice plus the approved plan sheet it contradicts |
| GC directed a redo verbally, "we'll paper it later" | Depends entirely on what you wrote that day | Written confirmation same day, then change order | An email sent that afternoon naming who said it and when |
Is Rework Billable on a T&M Job?
On T&M, hours are billable if they were authorized and they were not fixing your own defect. T&M does not make every hour automatically payable — it makes every hour automatically examinable.
That is the part contractors miss. A lump-sum customer argues about the scope. A T&M customer argues about the hours, line by line, and a rework line is the first one they stop on.
So a rework day on T&M needs more on it than a normal day, not less: the task, the location, and the reason the task happened twice.
What Your Contract Says About Who Eats a Redo
Three clauses decide most of this, and they are in nearly every sub agreement. Read yours before the argument, not during it.
Correction of work / warranty. Usually a one-year period during which you return and fix defective work at your cost. The operative word is defective — work that did not conform to the contract documents. Changes. Work added or altered after the contract documents were set is a change, priced separately. A redo caused by a change is a change, even though it is physically the same work you already did. Notice. Most contracts require written notice of a claim for extra work within a short window — often 7 to 21 days, sometimes 48 hours for T&M tickets. Blow the window and a legitimate charge becomes unrecoverable.This is not legal advice and your contract governs. But if you know which of those three buckets a redo falls into, you know whether to write a ticket or write it off.
Why Rework Hours Get Written Off Even When They Were Billable
Because "rework" is not a description of work. It is a category, and a category with no facts attached reads to the customer like an admission.
Compare two lines for the identical day:
9/8 — Reyes — rework — 8.5 hrsMon 9/8, 7:02a–3:48p, Reyes — re-pulled and re-terminated circuits 12–18, second-floor east wing, after panel location moved per RFI 44. 8.77 hrs.
The crew's field note is the customer's explanation. There is no second document that does this job. Whatever your crew writes at the end of the day is what your invoice will be defending three weeks later.
The Obstacle: Getting the Crew to Write Anything Down
Nobody is going to fill out a form in a gang box at 3:45 on a Friday. That is the honest constraint, and any method that ignores it fails in week two.
What works is a single question asked once, at the moment the guy is already stopping: what did you work on? One line. No form, no categories, no dropdown tree.
Two rules make the answers usable:
Rule one — a place, not a system. "East wing, second floor, panel 2B." Not "circuit work." Rule two — if it was a redo, say what changed. "after the wall moved," "after HVAC ran duct through the chase," "per Mike's direction 9/8."That second half is the whole ballgame. It takes four extra words and it is the difference between a billable extra and a write-off.
The Method: Documenting a Rework Day, Start to Finish
Do all five of these the same day. None of them require software.
1. Name the cause out loud, on site. Before the crew starts the redo, decide which bucket it is. If it is not your defect, it is a ticket. 2. Send the notice email that afternoon. Short and dated, to the GC's PM, copying whoever directed the work:"Confirming direction received today 9/8 from Mike Alvarez on site: second-floor east panel relocated from grid C-4 to D-6. Our circuits 12–18 were pulled and terminated to the original location on 9/2. Re-pull and re-termination will be billed as extra work at contract T&M rates. Estimated 12–16 man-hours. Please advise if this is not your understanding."
That paragraph is the single highest-value thing on this page. It costs two minutes and it converts a verbal into a documented direction. The T&M work authorization form in the kit below covers the same ground on paper when you'd rather get a signature on site.
3. Log the hours to a separate line. Same job, but the rework hours never mix with the base scope. If they mix, you can't prove either number. 4. Get the day's note from each person who touched it. Name, in/out times, what they did, where, and the cause phrase. 5. Photograph the condition before you undo it. A photo of the terminated circuits at the old location is worth more than a paragraph about them.For the paper version of all of this, the T&M Billing Backup Kit has a change-order log, a daily field report, and a T&M work authorization form — print them and keep them in the truck, free, no signup.
If you'd rather the note get captured on a phone instead of a clipboard, FieldTimesheet asks each worker "what did you work on?" at clock-out and prints that note on the customer-facing backup; it does not do cost codes or time categories, so the separate-line discipline in step 3 stays a discipline either way.
A Rework Log You Can Copy
One row per rework event. A legal pad works. So does a spreadsheet.
| Date | Location | What was redone | Cause | Directed by | Ref | Hrs | Bucket |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 9/8 | 2nd flr east, panel 2B | Re-pull + terminate ckts 12–18 | Panel relocated | M. Alvarez (GC) | RFI 44 | 13.5 | Billable extra |
| 9/9 | 1st flr corridor | Re-run 3/4" EMT, 40 ft | Duct ran through chase | — | Photos 9/9 | 6.0 | Backcharge — mech |
| 9/11 | Unit 204 | Replace 2 recep, wrong type set | Our error | — | — | 1.5 | Warranty — no charge |
That third row belongs in the log too. A log that only contains other people's faults reads as self-serving; a log that shows you tracking your own defects at the same standard is the one the GC believes.
What the Customer Should Receive With a Rework Charge
A rework line needs its own backup page, separate from the base scope. Date, who was on it, what they did, hours, bill rate, amount, and the reference number for the cause.
No cost rates, no labor burden, no margin — that is internal. The customer sees what was performed and what it was billed at.
You can see the shape of a customer-facing backup page on the sample billing packet, which is annotated and ungated. The format matters less than the rule: every rework hour on the invoice traces to a named cause and a dated note.
Example Arithmetic: What the Rework Buffer Actually Covers
Estimators commonly carry 5–10% for rework on complex projects, and the Construction Industry Institute has put the direct cost of field rework at roughly 5% of total construction cost. That buffer exists because some rework is always yours.
It was never meant to absorb the other guy's change. Run the numbers with your own inputs:
Example, visible inputs: a 2,400 man-hour electrical scope, 7% carried for rework = 168 buffer hours. If 60 of those hours came from panel relocations and other-trade damage, and the bill rate is $95/hr, that is 60 × $95 = $5,700 that was documentable extra work, not buffer. Substitute your own hours, split, and rate.The point is not the number. It is that the split between "mine" and "theirs" is only knowable if somebody wrote the cause down the same day.
To price out what an unresolved billing argument costs in your own numbers, the invoice dispute calculator runs it with your inputs.
FAQ
Who pays for rework on an electrical job — the contractor, the GC, or the owner? Whoever caused it. Your own defective work is yours to correct under the warranty clause. Owner or architect changes, wrong drawings, and inspector corrections on approved plans are normally the owner's, handled as a change order. Damage by another trade is normally backcharged to that trade through the GC. Is rework billable on a time-and-materials contract? Yes, if it was authorized and it was not correcting your own defect. T&M bills actual hours, so a rework day is billable the same as any other day — but the customer will examine that line harder, so it needs a cause named on the backup. How do I bill for rework caused by another trade? You bill the GC, and the GC backcharges the responsible trade. Send written notice the day it happens naming the trade, the location, and the condition, with photos taken before you undo the work. Without a same-day record it usually turns into a shared-cost negotiation. Does a warranty callback count as billable rework? Not if the original work was defective. It is billable if the callback turns out to be something else — damage after your work was accepted, a change the owner made, or a fault outside your scope. Log the visit either way so the pattern is visible. What documentation do I need to charge a customer for rework hours? Four things: a dated field note per worker describing what was performed and where, the cause of the redo stated in that note, a reference to the direction or RFI that caused it, and written notice sent within your contract's notice window. What if the GC says "just do it, we'll paper it later"? Do the work if the schedule requires it, then send a confirming email the same afternoon stating what was directed, by whom, at what time, and that it will be billed as extra work. A confirming email nobody objects to is close to a written direction. A memory three weeks later is not. How do I contest a backcharge for rework the GC says was our fault? Ask, in writing, for the specific work claimed defective and the contract provision it violates. Then produce your dated field record for those hours. A backcharge usually survives only when the sub has nothing to put against it. Should rework hours be tracked separately from regular hours? Yes — separate line, same job. If they are combined you cannot prove what the base scope actually cost, you cannot support the extra, and you cannot see your own defect rate. Related: job costing for electricians.The Short Version
Who pays for electrician rework hours is decided by cause. Cause is decided by what somebody wrote down that day.
The charge was probably fair. What is usually missing is the sentence that explains it. Four extra words at the end of a shift — after the wall moved — is the whole difference between an extra you collect and an extra you absorb.
Questions on any of this: support@fieldtimesheet.com.