Reducing risk
When the firm above you
When the firm above you
is in trouble.
Six 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 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.
Three of the 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.
Awaab's Law for repair contractors: timescales, phase 2 and the records to keepAwaab's Law puts statutory clocks on social landlords, and the work that meets them is usually done by their contractors. The timescales, what phase 2 adds, and the record a repairs contractor should hold at every attendance.Read it →
Waste transfer notes, and the duty that follows the skipThe load leaves site and your responsibility does not. What the note has to record, how long you keep it, and the one number on it worth checking before the lorry moves.Read it →
The O&M manual, and why handover takes a fortnightEverything the building owner needs, in one file, assembled at the end from records made over a year. Why that is the wrong way round, and what it costs when the certificates cannot be found.Read it →
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 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
Exposure, by customer and by manager.
By the time filed accounts show trouble the money is already at risk. What shows now is the payment pattern. Unibuild ages outstanding application value across current, thirty, sixty, ninety and one hundred and twenty plus day bands against the manager responsible for it.