Get it in writing before the work starts
Most subcontracts only make your main contractor pay for changes that were properly instructed, so get every instruction on paper. If the work has to start first, confirm the verbal instruction in writing the same day and give them the chance to correct you.
Updated: . By Jack Butler-Kettle, Construction Claims Consultant.
Why it matters
Instructions get given in a corridor by someone in a hurry. The work gets done, and your request for payment arrives weeks later. By then the person who gave the instruction has moved on, remembers it differently, or is under pressure to say it was included. With nothing written at the time, it is your word against theirs, just when you have least leverage.
Most subcontracts also set a form and a time limit for confirmations. One sent late or in the wrong form may count for nothing. Without it, the change becomes a favour you did for free. A same-day confirmation puts your main contractor on the spot. Either it corrects you that week, or it lives with what you wrote, because silence at the time is hard to explain later.
How to do it
- Tell every foreman and supervisor to pass any instruction given on site to the office the same day.
- Carry the confirmation form your subcontract requires, on paper or on a phone, so you can send it from site.
- Write the same day to the person who gave the instruction and to the person your subcontract names, by the route it names. Say what was instructed, by whom and when, and copy the site file.
- State that you treat it as a variation and will price it. Ask them to tell you within a set number of days if they disagree, and to send a written instruction. Say the work is going ahead in the meantime.
- Number the confirmation and enter it in your variation register before the work starts. Chase a written instruction if your subcontract requires one, and chase a reply where the change affects the money. Record whether the confirmation was accepted, disputed or met with silence.
- Keep the changed work separate in your records from day one, so the confirmation has costs behind it. Attach the confirmation email as back-up when you first apply for payment for the work.
Example
Illustrative example. The scenario and figures are invented.
The facts
On a Monday morning, the main contractor's site agent tells a subcontractor's site manager to reroute 40 metres of pipework around a new duct. The work will take two men 3 days and about £2,600 of materials.
What happens
- The site manager phones the office. The commercial manager emails the site agent and the main contractor's quantity surveyor before lunch.
- The email records the instruction, the time and who gave it. It says the subcontractor treats it as a variation, and asks for any disagreement within 3 days.
- The main contractor's quantity surveyor replies on the Tuesday, accepting it as a variation and asking for a price.
- The confirmation is numbered VC14, and the labour is booked to it from the Monday afternoon.
The outcome
The variation is priced at £4,400 and paid in the next cycle. The site agent leaves the job a month later. Without the confirmation, nobody would have been left to remember the instruction.
To have this set up for you, see our Unpaid Variation Prevention service.