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Commercial

Pricing the work, and knowing
what it cost you.

Eleven articles on the commercial side of a contracting business: what belongs in a price, what routinely gets left out of one, and where the margin goes between winning a job and closing the final account.

11 articles

Commercial, in one place.

A firm can price a job correctly and still lose money on it. The price is a single decision made on one day, and everything that erodes it happens afterwards: preliminaries nobody costed, a materials increase between quoting and ordering, day work that was never signed, and retention that sits unclaimed for two years after practical completion.

These 11 articles split that into its parts. Several of them end at a number you can work out for yourself, so the employee cost and retention calculators are linked from the ones where the sum is worth doing properly.

Operative in hard hat and safety glasses on siteCommercial··7 min readSnagging, and the list that decides when a job endsThe difference between a snag and a defect is who pays for it. How the list gets made, why it grows after handover, and what closes it out for good.Read it →A team working together at a shared tableCommercial··4 min readWhat an employee actually costs youSalary is about four fifths of it. Employer National Insurance at 15% above a £5,000 threshold, the pension, and the on-costs of putting somebody on a site make up the rest.Read it →Site team on a concrete slab with reinforcement beyondCommercial··4 min readSubcontractor or employee, and why HMRC may disagreePaying somebody through CIS does not make them self-employed. The tests that decide it, the arrangements that fail them, and the declaration you sign every month saying you have considered it.Read it →Technical drawings and tools on a workbenchCommercial··6 min readHow to price a construction job without guessingA method rather than a feeling: measure, build the rate, add the site costs that carry the job, recover overhead, then decide margin. The order matters.Read it →A hand writing on documents at a deskCommercial··5 min readHow to tell whether you are underpricingYou will not find it in the jobs that went wrong, but in the ones that went fine and returned less than they should. A test you can run in an afternoon.Read it →Site team on a concrete slab with reinforcement beyondCommercial··5 min readDay rate or fixed price, and when each one costs youNot a preference. A decision about who carries the risk of the unknown, and there is a right answer for most jobs once you are honest about what you do not know.Read it →Tower cranes above a building under constructionCommercial··5 min readMaterials went up after you quotedThe average tells you nothing. Structural steel rose 13.1% in the year to May 2026 while cement fell 5.0%. A quote is only exposed to what it is built from.Read it →Two colleagues at a desk after reaching an agreementCommercial··5 min readPreliminaries, the cost most firms forget to priceEverything that makes the job possible and appears on no drawing: supervision, welfare, access, plant standing, insurance, and the time before and after. Why it gets under-priced and how to stop.Read it →A technical drawing being marked up at a deskCommercial··5 min readQuote or estimate, and which one binds youOne becomes a fixed price the moment it is accepted. The other is an informed guess. The word at the top of the page is not what decides which you sent.Read it →Technical drawings and tools on a workbenchCommercial··7 min readThe gap between doing the work and having the moneyWages go out weekly, materials at thirty days, and the money comes back at sixty. Why a job that made a profit can still run a firm out of cash.Read it →Retention and the money that goes missing after practical completionCommercial··6 min readRetention, and the money that goes missing after practical completionWhere cash quietly disappears between the last valuation and the release of the second half of retention, and the four dates that decide whether you ever see it.Read it →

Other subjects

Site servicesThe three services a site cannot open without, what each one costs to put in, and the compliance estate that sits behind them once it is running.3 articlesGetting paidTen articles on what the Housing Grants, Construction and Regeneration Act 1996 gives a subcontractor: a right to be paid on a fixed timetable, and remedies for when that timetable is missed.10 articlesCommercialEleven articles on the commercial side of a contracting business: what belongs in a price, what routinely gets left out of one, and where the margin goes between winning a job and closing the final account.11 articlesHealth and safety13 articles on what the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2015 and RIDDOR require, who holds each duty, and what an inspector asks to see first.13 articlesTax and CISSeven articles on the two tax regimes that touch almost every construction payment made in the UK, and the deadlines that carry an automatic penalty when they slip.7 articlesChoosing softwareTwelve articles written for the person who has to make the decision rather than the person selling into it, including what the money goes on, what the support arrangement is really worth, and where the systems you already run reach their limit.12 articlesWinning workThree articles on the paperwork that decides whether you are allowed to price a job at all, which is a different problem from pricing it well.3 articlesReducing riskSix articles on spotting a main contractor in difficulty early enough to act on it, and on what can still be recovered once it is too late to.6 articlesSubcontractorsFinding them, checking them, and paying them without an argument about what the invoice should have said.3 articlesPlant and assetsPlant and stock cost money in the same quiet ways: kit nobody can find, materials bought twice, a delivery never checked against the order, hire nobody stopped, and an examination date nobody was watching.6 articles
Next step

Margin as a live figure, not a year-end discovery.

The price is one decision made on one day. Everything that erodes it happens over the months afterwards, in day work nobody signed and preliminaries nobody costed. Unibuild puts committed and actual cost against the job as it lands, next to the valuation.

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