Written for the people who value the work

The worst day on a subcontract, in plain terms: what your unpaid certificates become, why a dead pay-when-paid clause can come back to life on this exact day, and the direct-deal offer from the employer.

Disruption is loss of productivity on work that still had to be done. It can arise with no delay to completion at all.

A certificate for less is not money lost, it is money deferred, unless you let it disappear. Why the certified figure usually rules the month, how cumulative valuations carry the difference forward, and when the fight is worth having now.

The main contract has a bond, a guarantee and warranties. The packages that will actually fail have a signed order and nothing else.

The deepest point of the cumulative cash curve is the number a contractor has to be able to fund, and it arrives later than most people expect.

Prolongation is the time-related cost of a longer job. The recurring error is calculating it at the tender rate over the wrong period.

The CDP lets the contractor design a defined part of the works. It is valued by its own rules against the CDP Analysis, and keeping it on separate lines stops designed and measured work blurring in the certificate.

The surety pays on presentation and questions afterwards. Courts will restrain a call only in narrow circumstances, which is why contractors resist them.

Splitting a job into sections with their own completion dates gives each phase its own damages, its own retention drop and its own defects clock. Powerful where the client genuinely takes over in phases, and pure administrative debt where they do not.