Construction and fit-out
Main contractors, subcontractors and fit-out firms, where the job is won on an estimate nobody was paid for and lost on a variation nobody wrote down.
Where it breaks
A small sample of the problems we hear most often in construction and fit-out. Not a complete list, and not all of them will be yours.
- 01
Most of the estimating is done for nothing
An estimator prices four or five jobs to win one. Each one is a take-off from drawings, a round of subcontractor quotes and a build-up nobody pays for. The work is real and the win rate is not, so the cost of losing sits in the overhead where nobody measures it.
- 02
The variation was agreed on site and written down nowhere
A site instruction gets given verbally, the gang does the work that week, and the paperwork gets reconstructed months later from memory and a photograph. At final account the client's QS asks for the written instruction and there isn't one.
- 03
The payment clocks are run from habit
Under the Construction Act the payer has five days from the due date to serve a payment notice, and a pay less notice has to land before the final date for payment. Miss both and the sum you applied for becomes the notified sum. That cuts the other way too, and most contractors are running those dates off a spreadsheet and somebody's diary rather than off the contract.
- 04
Half the retention never gets asked for
Five per cent is held, half falls due at practical completion and the rest at the end of the defects liability period, often a year later by which time the project team has moved on. Nobody owns the date, so the second release gets claimed late, claimed short, or not claimed.
- 05
Subcontractor compliance is a folder, not a check
CIS verification, insurance expiry, RAMS, right to work and card checks sit in a shared drive per subbie. The insurance that lapsed in March is discovered when something goes wrong in September, and the monthly CIS return still gets assembled by hand before the nineteenth.
- 06
The CVR tells you about last month
Cost value reconciliation gets built from the accounts package and site records once a month. A job that started eroding in week two shows up in week seven, which is after the point where anything could have been done about it cheaply.
What we'd build
A small sample of the kind of thing we build. What we'd actually scope depends on which of the problems above is costing you most.
Estimating that starts from your own history
Quantities read off the drawings and priced against the rates you actually achieved on comparable jobs rather than a published book, with the subcontractor enquiries issued and their returns normalised into one comparison. The estimator reviews and adjusts instead of starting from a blank sheet, so pricing four jobs to win one stops costing four times as much.
More tenders priced per estimator, and the cost of the four you lose cut rather than absorbed.
Instructions captured where they are given
A site instruction dictated on the phone or photographed on site becomes a confirmation drafted the same day, issued to the client and logged against the job with its cost and time effect. The written record exists before the argument, which is the only point at which it is worth anything.
Variations recovered at final account instead of argued away for want of a written instruction.
The money clocks run themselves
Due dates, final dates for payment and the notice windows read out of each contract rather than re-typed, with the application drafted, the notice deadlines counted down, and the absence of a payment or pay less notice flagged on the day it matters. Retention releases diarised from practical completion and the defects period so both halves get claimed on time.
Applications paid in full, pay less notices caught, and both halves of the retention claimed.
Supply chain checked continuously
Insurance, CIS status, accreditations and cards held per subcontractor with their expiry dates watched, the subbie chased before they lapse, and anyone out of date flagged before they are booked onto a site rather than after. The monthly return assembles itself from the payments already recorded.
No lapsed insurance on site, and the monthly return produced rather than assembled.
Cost against value, as it moves
Committed cost, applied value and forecast final account per job kept current off the systems you already run, so the job drifting off margin surfaces in the week it starts rather than at the next reporting cycle.
A job drifting off margin surfaced in the week it starts, not in next month's CVR.
Recognise any of these?
Thirty minutes with a founder. Walk us through the problems your team lives with and we'll talk about whether any of it has to stay that way.