Why you cannot find
reliable subbies.
It is treated as a hiring problem and it is a retention problem. The firms that get the good trades are the ones that are straightforward to work for, and most of that is commercial rather than social.
Published ·5 min read·Written by Unibuild
Reliable subcontractors are not hard to find. They are hard to attract, because they are not short of work and they choose who to price for. The firms that get them are the ones that are straightforward to work for: clear scope, decisions answered, applications dealt with, and payment on the date that was agreed.
It is not a hiring problem
The complaint is always framed the same way: we cannot find good subbies. Framed like that it has no solution, because it implies the good ones are hidden and the task is searching harder.
They are not hidden. They are working for somebody else, and the question worth asking is why that firm rather than yours.
A genuinely good subcontractor with a full order book is making a choice every time an enquiry lands. They price the ones they want and let the others go quiet. So the useful question is not where to find them, it is what you look like on the list.
Good trades are not short of work. They are short of contractors who are straightforward to work for, which is a much smaller pool than it should be.
What they are actually choosing between
Ask subcontractors why they favour one main contractor over another and the answers are consistent, and almost none of them are about rates.
- Do they get paid when they were told they would. Overwhelmingly the first answer, and the one that outranks price.
- Is the scope clear enough to price. An enquiry with drawings, a programme and a defined package is cheap to price. One that requires three phone calls to understand gets deprioritised, particularly when the trade is busy.
- Do decisions come back. Being on site with nothing to do because nobody answered a question costs a subcontractor real money.
- Is the paperwork proportionate and asked for once. Four separate emails over three weeks each requesting one document tells a good firm exactly how the job will run.
- Do applications get dealt with rather than argued. A contractor that reduces every valuation on principle trains its supply chain to inflate and to look elsewhere.
Notice how many are within your control and cost nothing.
The levers that actually work
Four, in order of effect.
Pay on the date. Not early, just when you said. This is the single strongest thing a contractor can do and it is almost entirely a process question rather than a cash one: most late payments are late because somebody did not deal with the application in time, not because the money was not there.
Send an enquiry somebody can price without ringing you. Drawings, scope, programme, what is included and excluded, and when you need the price. Half an hour of your time converts into a better and faster response from every trade you send it to.
Ask for the compliance pack once, at onboarding. Everything at the same time, in a format they already have, and do not ask again for what you hold. That is set out in vetting a subcontractor.
Answer questions in a day. Even when the answer is that you do not know yet.
Where vetting fits, without contradicting itself
There is an apparent tension between wanting to be easy to work for and needing insurance, cards, accreditation and RAMS before anybody starts. It resolves cleanly.
What makes vetting painful is not the list, it is the process: asked repeatedly, asked late, asked in pieces, asked again for things already provided. A subcontractor who receives one clear request at the point of award, and is never asked for the same certificate twice, does not experience it as friction. The same list delivered badly is the reason they stop returning your calls.
Keeping them once you have them
Cheaper than finding them, and mostly a matter of not doing avoidable things.
Give them enough notice to plan labour. Tell them early when a programme moves rather than letting them mobilise and be turned away, because remobilisation is the most common uncompensated cost in subcontracting. Deal with the final account rather than letting it drift, and release retention without being chased, which is rare enough to be remembered. And where something goes wrong on their package, say so directly and quickly rather than through the valuation.
Most of the levers above are process rather than software, and the honest position is that a system does not make a firm easy to work for. What it removes is the specific failures caused by information being scattered: applications sitting unactioned because nobody owned them, the same certificate requested twice because the first is in an inbox, insurance currency unknown at the moment of instruction, and payment dates that nobody is watching. Unibuild holds subcontractors as records with their orders, documents, insurance position and payment history together, and gives them their own portal login showing the orders you issued, the invoices they raised against them, and whether those have been approved and paid. That last one removes a whole category of phone call, for both sides.
Where to start, on Monday
Ask three subcontractors you rate a direct question: what is the most annoying thing about working for us. You will get a real answer, it will be specific, and it will usually be something small and fixable that nobody in your business knew about.
Then check one number: over your last twenty subcontractor payments, how many went out on the date they were due. If the answer is most of them, you are already ahead of most of the market. If it is not, that is the first lever and it is worth more than the other three together.
The follow-up questions.
The checks to run before instructing anybody are in vetting a subcontractor.
How do I find reliable subcontractors?+
What do subcontractors actually value in a main contractor?+
Does paying more attract better subcontractors?+
How do I make vetting less off-putting?+
What is the most common uncompensated cost for a subcontractor?+
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