Changing a dishwasher from hardwired to cord-and-plug

My dishwasher flooded my kitchen, requiring the removal of the flooring and eventually the lower cabinets. I turned off the water supply to the dishwasher right after the flood, but couldn’t unplug it because there wasn’t a receptacle anywhere I could see. I was worried that it was hardwired, and the flood remediation guys quickly discovered that a) it was, and b) there was only about 8 inches of slack in the cable.

I am not especially pleased about this. The dishwasher isn’t on a switch or a dedicated circuit, and I have no idea which circuit it is on (none of them is labeled "dishwasher", it’s not on either kitchen receptacle circuit, and the breaker panel labeling in general is pretty bad). Right now, I have no knowledge of how to de-energize a major appliance that uses water. Even when I figure out which circuit it’s on, this setup will needlessly complicate future dishwasher installation and service, so I would much prefer to have a receptacle for it.

I had two contractors come out today to measure for estimates on the rebuild. Both told me that the dishwasher was supposed to be hardwired and they couldn’t change it, though one said he could lengthen the cable. I live in New Castle County, Delaware, which follows NEC-2014 as near as I can tell. The selected answer in this previous question directly quotes NEC-2014 saying that dishwashers can definitely be cord-and-plug provided some relatively simple requirements are met. And while this is the first house I’ve owned, I’m pretty confident that I’ve seen the cord-and-plug setup in other houses I’ve lived in. So why might two contractors have told me they couldn’t put in a receptacle for the dishwasher?