Written for the people who value the work

Before anything else, check one thing: were his applications paid? A subcontractor suspending over non-payment under section 112 is exercising a right, not abandoning. Where the walk-off is real, how to value what he left and deduct properly.

An adjudicator's decision binds temporarily and is enforced by summary judgment in the TCC. Pay now, argue later. The defences are narrow, and insolvency can be one of them.

Somebody on the client side is supposed to value your work, certify it and run the clock. Knowing who, by name and role, decides where your application goes, whose silence starts the default machinery, and whose email actually binds the client.

Under NEC the assessment date drives the timetable. With Option Y(UK)2 the payment becomes due seven days after it and the final date fourteen days after that. The gap is where a JCT habit costs a week.

NEC has no retention unless secondary Option X16 is included. Where it is, there is a retention free amount, a percentage, and a two-stage release at Completion and the Defects Certificate.

A deposit is payment for work you have not done yet, which makes it a debt until you earn it. The recovery schedule that stops it becoming a hole at the end of the job, the VAT point most builders miss, and the fairness trap on domestic work.

No single extra under two hundred pounds feels worth the awkward conversation, and thirty of them are a month’s wages. The three-sentence habit that captures small changes without souring the job, and the quote clause that makes the habit expected.

Keeping and handing over the golden thread of information is work. Work has a cost. Price it and put it in the estimate, rather than filing it under compliance and hoping.

The same figures read for a different question. A client asks what it will cost; a funder asks whether the money already lent is still secured.