Reducing risk
When the firm above you
When the firm above you
is in trouble.
Three 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.
3 articles
Reducing risk, in one place.
Filed accounts tell you about a firm roughly eighteen months after the fact. What tells you now is behaviour: valuations shaved without an explanation, payment slipping a week at a time, and a commercial team that keeps changing.
The three articles below run in that order, from the free checks worth doing before you take the order, through the signals that arrive first, to what is worth securing in the first seven days of an administration.
The contractor above you has gone into administrationWhat to do in the first seven days, where you rank, and the three things worth securing before anybody tells you to stop.Read it →
Warning signs the firm above you is in troubleThe accounts tell you eighteen months late. What tells you now is behaviour: valuations shaved without explanation, payment slipping a week at a time, and the commercial team turning over.Read it →
Credit checking the firm above you, free, in twenty minutesEverything you need is public and none of it costs anything. Filing history, charges, director record, county court judgments, and the payment data large firms must publish.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 paidNine 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.9 articlesCommercialTen 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.10 articlesHealth and safetyEight 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.8 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 softwareSeven articles written for the person who has to make the decision rather than the person selling into it, including what the money goes on and where the systems you already run reach their limit.7 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 articles