The instructions happen on WhatsApp and stay there
The work gets done, the record never leaves somebody's phone, and the account pays for it.
Updated: . By Jack Butler-Kettle, Construction Claims Consultant.
If the instruction changed the work and the price, see what to do when you are doing changed work on a say-so.
What's happening?
The instruction arrives as a voice note, a sketch or a short message at the end of a long thread. The work goes ahead. The original stays on one person's phone, buried among other chats, with no job reference and no backup.
A message shows what someone wrote. It does not prove they had authority, that it reached the right person the way your subcontract requires, or what it changed. If that phone is lost, replaced or wiped, the only record of the instruction goes with it.
The solution
Export each instruction the day it arrives: the voice note or message, the sender, the time, any sketch and the thread around it. File it under the job and the area it changes, and leave the original untouched. Then confirm it in writing through the route your subcontract names.
Unpaid Variation Prevention builds that capture step into your confirmation routine. Where the threads already hold instructions nobody confirmed, Variation Claim works through them. It checks authority against your subcontract, prepares confirmations where it is not too late, and values the rest on what the messages can prove.
Example
Illustrative example. The scenario and figures are invented.
The facts
A plastering subcontractor's foreman gets a voice note from the main contractor's site manager on a Thursday evening. It asks for the second-floor corridor ceilings to be skimmed as well, and a photo of a sketch follows. The work starts on the Friday.
What happens
- The thread is exported in full before the weekend's messages bury it. The export holds the audio file, the sketch, the sender's name and number, the timestamps and the messages around it.
- The export is filed under the job reference against the drawing and the area. The original stays on the phone untouched.
- The subcontract's confirmation route is checked. A verbal instruction must be confirmed in writing to the main contractor's contracts manager within a stated period. The site manager has no authority to order extra work.
- The confirmation goes out on the Friday, referring to the export. The authority question is put to the contracts manager directly, not left to be argued later.
- The contracts manager confirms the instruction on the Monday.
The outcome
The corridors, £6,400, are certified in the next cycle. A monthly check then asks each foreman for the threads on their phone. It finds two more instructions on other jobs, both exported before the phones are replaced at the end of the quarter.