Winning work
Getting on the list, and
Getting on the list, and
bidding for the work.
Three 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
Winning work, in one place.
Being able to do the work is rarely what keeps a firm off a tender list. What keeps it off is an accreditation that lapsed, a policy nobody has written down, or an insurance certificate that expired between the pre-qualification questionnaire and the award.
These three articles cover the gate rather than the race: what SSIP schemes actually assess, what a main contractor checks before adding a firm to an approved list, and what changes when the client is a public body.
Bidding for public sector work for the first timeThe Procurement Act 2023 changed how this works in February 2025, and one requirement is absolute: register on the Central Digital Platform or you cannot be awarded a contract at all.Read it →
Getting on a main contractor's approved listThe application is the easy half. What decides it is the evidence pack behind it, and what gets a firm quietly dropped afterwards is rarely the work.Read it →
SSIP, CHAS, Constructionline and what replaced PAS 91An acronym map with the money attached. Which schemes are health and safety only, which are full pre-qualification, what mutual recognition actually saves you, and why PAS 91 is no longer the answer.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 articlesReducing riskThree 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