Written for the people who value the work

Disputes are decided on records made at the time, by someone who was there, with a date attached. What makes a photo, a diary or an email usable a year later, the reconstructed records that fail, and the ten-minute daily habit that wins arguments you have not had yet.

A provisional sum is an allowance for work nobody could define at tender: the drains until the ground is opened, the rot until the floor comes up. When the work firms up it is valued like a variation, and whether you also get time depends on one word: defined.

Two contracts, two timetables, and a main contractor in between funding the difference. How the gap arises, how large it gets, and what can be done at procurement.

Silence after handover is a strategy, and it works on builders who chase by text message. The ladder that beats it: one letter with a schedule, a real deadline, and a named next step, with the route depending on who your client is.

Your contract names who can give an instruction that binds the client. Everyone else on site is giving you a request. How to tell the difference, and the one-line email that converts one into the other.

A client who claims defects and refuses access is running the weakest version of their own claim. Why your right to return matters, what refusing it does to the money they can recover, and the two dated letters that put the refusal on the record.

Four dates in a fixed order: due date, payment notice, pay less notice, final date for payment. Who sets each one, what fills the gap when the contract is silent, and which of them bind on your job.

Taking off is not measuring, it is measuring in a system: one pass per trade, a consistent order through the building, everything written where the next person can check it. The method surveyors use, scaled to a kitchen table.

Calls unanswered, valuations unpaid, and you are halfway through their building. The order of moves that protects you: stop increasing your exposure, suspend properly rather than walk, record the state of the works, and find out what kind of disappearance this is.