Building

Tendering, programmes, retention and getting paid. Running a construction business where the work is won on price and lost on cash flow.

Tendering, and the job you win by pricing it wrong. You priced it at £184,000. It went for £161,000. You were both looking at the same drawings, which means one of you priced something that is not there.
Retention, stage payments and the cash you have earned but not got. Practical completion was eighteen months ago and £4,200 of your money is still in somebody else's account. Nobody is being difficult. That is just how it works.
The Construction Industry Scheme, in plain terms. Your first CIS statement arrives and £1,100 of what you invoiced went somewhere before it reached you. It is not lost. Knowing where it went is the whole scheme.
Employment status on site, and who decides it. He has been on your books for three years, drives your van, works the hours you set and invoices weekly through a limited company. Somebody has decided he is self-employed.
Fixed price, moving costs. You quoted timber in February and bought it in June. The difference between the two prices was your margin, and the contract said fixed price.
The programme, the critical path and the six weeks of rain. Rain delayed the groundworks by six weeks. Whether that costs you money, costs the client money, or costs nobody anything depends entirely on where it sat on the programme.
Snagging, practical completion and the defects year. Practical completion is not the day the job is finished. It is a legal switch that moves insurance, releases half your retention and starts a twelve-month clock you cannot ignore.
Hire it or buy it. A three-tonne excavator at £180 a week hired, or £34,000 bought. The answer is not about the prices. It is about how many weeks a year the thing is actually in the ground.
When the HSE visits a site. An inspector arrives unannounced at nine on a Tuesday. What happens over the next two hours depends almost entirely on decisions you made months earlier about scaffolding and paperwork.
Why main contractors go under at the top of a boom. Contractors rarely fail in a recession. They fail eighteen months into a boom, with a full order book, because turnover was bought at a margin that could not survive one bad job.
Finding a bricklayer. You need two bricklayers for six weeks starting Monday. There are none at the rate you priced, and the four weeks you lose finding them cost more than paying over the odds would have.
Design and build, and who carries the drawing that is wrong. The architect's drawing was wrong. Under a traditional contract that is a variation and the client pays. Under design and build it is your problem, and you signed for it at tender.
CDM, and who is legally in charge of the site. On a domestic job the client's legal duties do not disappear. They land on you, usually without anyone telling you, and they start before the first delivery.
Building control, and the inspection you must not miss. Concrete goes in on Friday. The inspector cannot come until Tuesday. What happens next decides whether the house is sellable in ten years.
Quoting for a kitchen, not a contract. A homeowner reads a quote as a promise about the finished kitchen. You wrote it as a price for the work you listed. The gap between those two readings is where the money goes.
The van that is emptied overnight. The van is emptied between eleven and four. The insurer asks where it was parked, what was locked, and where the receipts are. Two of those three answers usually fail.
Falls are still the thing that kills. There is no two metre rule and there never was. The regulations apply wherever a fall could injure someone, including off the back of a van.
The survey before the sledgehammer. A management survey says the building is safe to occupy. It says nothing about what is behind the wall you are about to take out, and the two documents are not interchangeable.

Building

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