Jacob Austin 00:00:00 Hi all Jacob Austin here from QS.Zone. And welcome to episode 77 of the Subcontractors Blueprint, the show where subcontractors will learn how to ensure profitability, improve cash flow and grow their business. Today's episode is about an all important aspect of construction that can be overlooked and that is effective communication. And when you think about construction, we're always talking about tight deadlines, juggling suppliers, dealing with design changes, and trying to get yourself paid. But the truth is, communication and communicating effectively can save you more time, money and stress than most pieces of plant and equipment on site. Done right. It can help you avoid some catastrophic project ending issues and create a collaborative spirit that pushes everybody to succeed. But on the flip side, it can lead to paper wars. Email tennis friction with your main contractor, and even Uneven, messy disputes that can chew up your margin. So today we'll be looking at what makes effective communication the subcontractor secret weapon in the construction industry. And before we dig in, if you're new to the show, please subscribe for more user friendly advice on all things subcontracting.
Jacob Austin 00:01:35 So let's start with a why. Why is communication so important in the contracting world? We're often working on tight margins, and especially when you're working on competitively tendered commercial construction. This can mean that one slip up, one missed instruction, or one last piece of vital information can balloon into massive costs to do remedial works and potentially critical path delays. And who ends up footing that bill? Often it will be the party that's failed to get that instruction in writing, or hasn't flagged up a potentially costly issue at the right time. Effective communication isn't about just being nice. It's about managing your risk. Having a clear, documented trail to back up instructions and knowing which communications need to be made, which way to be compliant with your contract. Also, no matter your trade, be it electrical, brickwork, steelwork, plastering or anything else. A good reputation is what's going to land you future contracts and can give you leverage in negotiation. Being the organised subcontractor who always communicates clearly goes a long way to help you secure repeat work.
Jacob Austin 00:02:49 And it can create that trusting relationship where the contractor is happy to award you higher risk and higher value contracts. So therefore, communicating effectively is not just about making a success of the project you're on. It's also about winning the long term game. Imagine if nobody bothered with their site diary and changes in how to actually build the job. Just got passed around by word of mouth. And if the only time you saw an email was when there was a crisis and the contractor was trying to land the blame on somebody. That kind of environment will breed chaos and it will lead to your project failing. And by contrast, a well structured communication system will reduce confusion and potentially friction between you and other trades or the main contractor, and it will get away from that. He said she said that can cause so many issues. So let's talk. Three important communication habits that can make all the difference to your site performance. Those for me are rfis site instructions and daily diaries. These are all vital bits of documentation that you will need to rely on later, and they're essentially your insurance policy against miscommunication.
Jacob Austin 00:04:03 So let's start with rfis or requests for information. This is your formal method of seeking clarification or additional details about the design, the scope, or any ambiguity in instructions. So you might receive a detail from your architect highlighting an intersection in the building. And that then might contrast with the spec or your bill of quantities for the job. Or you might need to know how to proceed given an unforeseen ground condition. This is your way of formally saying I need direction. Please advise me what to do, and it's essential to use this to mitigate risks. Instead of guessing, you get an official instruction, some clarity from your contractor on exactly what they're expecting. This can avoid you from doing the same job twice, which is always costly, and it's absolutely necessary if there are some key performance criteria linked to the building. So things like a floor area, liquidated damages or critical dimensions for something that the client is going to install when they take the handover. Say they want to install a really expensive piece of manufacturing kit.
Jacob Austin 00:05:09 So it's vital that the opening to the building and the pads that that sits on are set out in the right place. You getting that wrong? Spells disaster for you. The main contractor and perhaps some other subcontractors involved in the same bits of work. So it's important, if there's any ambiguity, that you get proper clarity. They're also a good document and record to have in your back pocket. If you face a delay because you're waiting on some design information, then the RFI log will act as proof that you saw answers in a timely fashion. It also shows that you're proactive and you're thorough, and many main contractors will appreciate that approach. So how do you use these effectively? Well, clarity is king. Don't bury your act. Your question in paragraphs of narrative a short blurb about what the issue is, followed by a by a direct question or perhaps a bullet point list of issues that you've got. That will give a clear way for the contractor to go away and establish what the information is. We've all heard the old adage of the picture telling a thousand words.
Jacob Austin 00:06:13 And that's really true in this scenario. If there's a detail that's missing or unclear on a drawing, attaching a little screenshot of that with the area highlighted, or perhaps your sketch of a proposed solution to a problem attaching that to your RFI, or save you bags of time describing the issue, and it'll help you to get a speedy and accurate response. The next thing to do is to set proper deadlines or timescales. And the best way about this is to go right back to the start of the job and agree a proper process within the pre start meeting. This is a place if contractors don't use Rfis as a matter of course, that you can introduce the process and agree the timescales for you to get a response back from the contractor. One of your obligations under your subcontract is to ask for information in a timely fashion. So that's not to say right. I've got to this piece of work. I need to start it tomorrow. And now I've started looking at it. I can't do it because I need this, this and this.
Jacob Austin 00:07:11 The obligation is there to force you to be proactive. And the RFI process sits hand in hand with that because you know what your deadline is from your contractor. So you know that you need to at least factor in the time for that deadline to elapse in between requesting the information and needing to actually use it. Inevitably, some of these will get missed. But be really clear about the date that you need the information. And as long as it isn't a regular occurrence, the contractor will be working with you on it. And the final thing to do to manage the RFI process effectively is to track them. So this is where an Excel schedule works really well. Beware of making your tracking document over complicated, because the more time it takes you to put into it, the more likely you're going to let it slide when things are things are getting tight time wise, so consider the best approach. I would actually use a schedule that pulls information onto a template form, and then you get a two for one with all the detail that you can think of.
Jacob Austin 00:08:10 But if you're using separate documents, then the RFI number, the date issued, the date the response is required, and enough information for you to be able to identify the problem. That should suffice in terms of tracking. If there are any issues, then having this information in a simple schedule that you can refer to will save you all manner of time and effort. Going back through emails and trying to collate the details later. If the project has been suffering with late design, then this is all the more vital to keep this schedule going, because it might just be the evidence that you need to defend a country charge for lost time, or to be able to back up an extension of time of your own. So next we've got site instructions. These are directions from the main contractor. Or sometimes they're passed through from either the client or the contract administrator to tell you to do something. Sometimes it's just directing you to do a particular part of your work already, or sometimes it's to introduce a change beyond the original contract scope.
Jacob Austin 00:09:12 This might be variations in detailing changes in materials or sequencing of work. A site instruction is typically recognized in standard forms of subcontract, although they sometimes get called architects instructions or project managers instructions. Depending on who the parties to the contract are. Typically for you, they will be contractors instructions or site instructions, but these are important documents. They matter to you because they are proof of a change. If you're ever asked to undertake work outside your original scope, ensure you have an instruction in writing. Otherwise, you might be chasing for payment like an uphill struggle. Or you might find yourself in the awkward situation of having to put something right or back to an original detail that you've been told to do by a site manager, but you haven't got the evidence to demonstrate that you were asked to do it. These are also a simple way to kick off your variation valuations, so some best practices. Requesting written confirmation. If a site manager asks you to do something in a verbal fashion, just get on with X, then follow up with a request for a written instruction.
Jacob Austin 00:10:25 If they don't do that fairly swiftly, then your best defence is to submit a confirmation of verbal instruction. And this is a form of contractual notice under a JCT contract where you confirm back to the contractor. You instructed me to do X and Y, and then they can either respond to it to confirm it or respond to it to correct it. Or the third and lesser spotted option is they don't respond to it at all, in which case after two weeks it's considered accepted. Part of what helps with good communication around instructions is keeping things organized so that when you're providing quotations for additional work, you've got a unique reference for each one of them. And then everybody has got a clear understanding of what you're talking about. Change number X. Silly little things like that can save absolutely loads of heartache when wires get crossed. And it avoids inevitable confusion arguing about different things. Even better, practice on this is collating all of your quotes into one book, an Excel workbook. You can copy them into your applications for payment so that each time you're making an application, you're presenting with it the full details of each change.
Jacob Austin 00:11:34 So there can't be any arguments over. Oh well, I didn't know what that was for, so I just paid a small amount on account. It's forcing the valuation of your work to happen. And finally on changes, if you receive an instruction that you think is going to cost you more money or take longer, then let your contractor know. It's always better to set the expectation upfront than to crack on with it and start arguing about it later. Even if you can't properly quantify the price or get a proper handle on it until you've done the work, it's still worth raising the issue and establishing the awareness that it's going to cost more money up front. Moving on to daily site diaries. These are straightforward records of what happens on site each day. Think of it like the black box on a plane. If something goes wrong, the plane goes down. That's where you're looking for clues and answers. Typical information to record is weather conditions. Who was on site? Names. Trades. Number of operatives.
Jacob Austin 00:12:29 Equipment and materials delivered. Key tasks and progress made with those tasks. Any incidents or unusual events and any issues that are either going to hold up your progress or going to change what you're going to do. So if you're missing design information, if you're given an instruction, what you get from this is retrospectively, if there's a dispute about how many days you spent on a particular section of work, your diary has got that detail, you can use it to analyze, delay and see the point at which you started being stalled by the late information? Or you can look at the number of days where weather has been affected. You're working. Now, these aren't a point about actually communicating the issue, but it's a way to collate the information that you need to communicate. Should you be affected by delaying issues to get this done? It really needs to be somebody that's on site on a daily basis. So pick somebody responsible like your site supervisor or your most able tradesperson. Consider doing it digitally. There are available mobile apps that prompt you with what to fill in, and can automatically sync with you at the head office to give you the relevant information easily and quickly.
Jacob Austin 00:13:39 It also makes sure that your diary is consistent and it's easy to retrieve. There's no chance of losing it if your supervisor or the person responsible walks off site. The other thing that you have to do with this is be really consistent with it. The diary becomes a bit of a useless exercise If you start skipping days and it starts to become patchy. So it has to be a daily ritual. It's either something you sit down with on your breakfast break and fill out whilst you're having your bowl of porridge, or done at the same time every afternoon when the progress for the day has had its back broken. But this really needs to be a habit that you build in to your daily routine. Now let's have a chat about emails. Love them or hate them? They are a big part of our communication matrix. And a well-crafted email can be a golden thread of clarity, but then a badly written one can be the Kickstarter of an all out war. So let's talk about how to keep them sharp, succinct, and solution focused because done well.
Jacob Austin 00:14:42 Email provides a great tin record. It's easy to reference, is quick to send. You can attach drawings, images, tables, schedules, almost anything you want. But as with any form of written correspondence, the tone can be misunderstood. And when you start seeing people at CC, every man and his dog into emails, it's easy to drown in an avalanche of messages you've been copied into. That prompts people to skim read instead of properly delving into each communication, so therefore crucial information can be missed. And on top of that, they are very easy to hammer out and send full of emotion. And once that infamous send button has been pressed, you can't take it back. So a great tip on that front is if you feel yourself feeling heated whilst you're drafting an email, it's just to save it as a draft. Go for a walk, go for your lunch, or even save it overnight. Read it back to yourself the following day and you'll be able to pick out the unnecessarily or perhaps passive aggressive parts of it and tone it back down into what you intended to write.
Jacob Austin 00:15:49 But let's discuss constructing an ideal email. A subject line should be like your newspaper headline. is you grab your attention and tell you exactly what you're going to find inside. At a quick glance as you scan through your inbox. So rather than ducked routine question, you could title it. Urgent clarification needed. School project six. RFI eight. HVAC Duct routing. At a simple glance, everybody knows what they're going to find inside. Then the body of your email. You should ideally always start with a friendly greeting. Hi Mr. Name, hope you're well. Obviously keep that short and then get straight to the point. Don't bury your main request in ramblings and paragraphs. Make it visible and early. If it's an RFI, then label it as such and obviously the same if it's a site instruction. Provide some context mentioning briefly your background information if you need to, but keep it concise and consider whether bullet points will enable you to get the message over quickly and succinctly. Clear action items end with a direct request.
Jacob Austin 00:16:59 Please confirm by Friday. Give the recipient a clearer direction as to what you need. Tone and professionalism. Always stay calm when you're writing an email. And as I mentioned earlier, if you're feeling frustrated, draft it, wait till later, and then either edit or rewrite it all together to remove the heated language. Don't use all caps. It reads as if you're shouting at somebody, and always check your spelling and grammar to display your professional side and show your attention to detail. Copying in the right people is important. People that are pertinent to the issue, that can either make decisions or that must stay informed. These are the people you want to copy in. You don't want to extend it to everyone in this dog, and you don't want to start copying in the likes of directors or contract managers just because you've got some kind of relationship with them. Save them for the escalation points if you need to, but don't make them your matter, of course. Correspondent. Consider whether email is the best option.
Jacob Austin 00:18:04 Sometimes the emails are just too slow or the topic is too sensitive. Or it might be something complex that a quick phone call or a quick face to face meeting can help you get through buckets of information really quickly. That would take hours and hours over email. The beauty of it, though, is after you've had that discussion, you can send a short, succinct follow up email just to confirm our discussion. Earlier, we agreed X, Y, and Z, and you get the perfect blend of the immediate action coming out of real time conversation. Alongside that clarity of written documentation and the record that goes with it. Now, nothing can kill your time and morale on a project like a well toned paper war or chain of email tennis. Particularly when each side is exchanging increasingly angry letters, notices and blame laden emails. So you start noticing snippy and curt replies, key phrases like we put you on notice, or emails which are reiterating the contractual background or previous conversations as if they're building up an evidence folder with each email exchanged.
Jacob Austin 00:19:17 This is when you need to tread carefully, and you can do that by staying solution orientated. If you're responding to something that sounds accusatory to you, acknowledge the issue but pivot towards what you propose to do about it. How you can solve the problem rather than arguing about whose fault it is. Sometimes picking up the phone, breaking that chain of email, and having a ten minute discussion can de-escalate the situation altogether. And even better, if this can be an on site meeting. You can draw a line under things, record some minutes, and move on no matter what. Whilst you're emailing. Stay polite. No sarcasm, insults or other jabs, which will only fuel fire when you're having a fallout. If you can remain civil and professional, you'll likely lower the temperature on the other side too. Sometimes some form of escalation is necessary. Maybe there's a large sum in dispute, or you're struggling to get hold of a sensible response to your requests. When it gets serious like that, this is the point that you can start forwarding your email to a more senior representative to escalate the situation.
Jacob Austin 00:20:29 And of course, if it's really serious, this might be the point where you're referring things to an expert to get their input on the situation. If you get to this point, the key is to keep your facts straight. Rely on your site diary, the email trails, the instructions, the rfis, the documents that we've already spoken about are really strong records to help you structure your argument about why you might be out. Time or money? Having the facts enables you to speak from a place of strength. And it's the best defense and the best offense. If you wind up in any kind of third party dispute resolution. Now we've covered emails and some of the worst sides of communication. Let's look at creating a culture of openness and respect, and one that helps avoid misunderstandings in the first place. Because that's what we all need. Often projects have weekly or biweekly meetings. And sometimes these can drag on without seeming to yield meaningful outcomes. So these need to count. If you're not the person setting the meeting, you can still ask for an agenda.
Jacob Austin 00:21:36 I said it's circulated in advance and prompt the inclusion of issues that you know you need to get resolved. Whether that's technical answers you need, instructions you're waiting for, or potential issues. The next one's a bit of a strange one, but this really has been proven to work. If possible, have how everybody stand up at the meeting when people can't get too comfortable and start drifting off in their chair, they're more likely to stick to the point and get what they need to say out on the table quickly. Appreciating that's not always possible because you're not always the one driving the meetings. But if it's the case where you find yourself with 15 to 20 minutes and you've got quite a bit to fit into that time, then a standing up meeting might be appropriate, and you'd be surprised at how much you can get achieved in that time. One important thing to make sure gets done at the end of a meeting is to summarize who's responsible for what, what needs to be progressed and when it's due. Hopefully these are done as a matter of course, but if they're not, be prepared to take notes yourself, because there's nothing more demoralising than sitting in a meeting for an hour and coming back two weeks later to repeat the same process, having found nothing has moved on because nobody has communicated what the deadlines are and who should be picking up the various items that get discussed.
Jacob Austin 00:22:56 The next part is about working as a team with those other trades that work around you. You will rarely get single and sole access to one particular face of work, and when you do, it's only for a small period of time before somebody else needs to come in behind you and carry on with their part of work. And that is where the main contractor should be coming in. They should be organizing who goes into what section on what day, what they get done, so that the next person can pick up at the right point. But there's nothing stopping you from liaising with the other trades to try and keep that momentum going and try and keep everybody working productively. Getting to know the other site foremen that are working for various trades can really help you, because you start to understand the constraints that they're working with, and particularly if you can try and accommodate those. It makes the project so much more successful. Giving credit and showing respect to each other can go a long way. And it's not just about, say, complimenting the workmanship that somebody has somebody's done.
Jacob Austin 00:23:54 It's about leaving the area tidy so that the next tradesperson hasn't got to waste their time tidying up before they can start watching out for each other's safety and communicating with each other. If you can see potential issues arising now, when things get late and you're working to try and catch up the programme, there can be a tendency to try and hide or mask over issues, but these rarely result in the best outcome. And quite often when these things come to light later, it costs more money to put them right. So don't hide issues that you find if there's a clash or some kind of structural misalignment, raise it with the site manager, raise it with the other site form, and try and get a design based answer to it. The earlier a problem is known about, the easier and cheaper it is to generally fix it. So the best time to tell somebody that there's an issue is two weeks or a month before you actually need to do anything about it. The second best time is now, and this approach is positive for the whole project, not just your own scope of work.
Jacob Austin 00:24:56 Encouraging your foreman to be proactive about communications is really going to assist you as a subcontractor as well. I always remember a conversation with a director from a subcontractor, which was quite early in my career, and as we were talking about who was going to resource the job with at the pre start meeting, he was talking really passionately about trying to get hold of a particular site supervisor that had used before, and for whatever reason, he'd let him go to another subcontractor, but he really wanted to get him back. And his rationale for wanting him back was all about communication and foresight. He said that a good supervisor will make your job, whereas a poor supervisor can break it. And this particular supervisor would look at where he is today and manage his lands accordingly. And whilst they were at work, he would go and look at tomorrow's work, next week's work and even the work up to 5 or 6 weeks in advance. And the difference that made in terms of making sure that the right parts were on site, that dimensions were correct, so that clashes were identified, spoken about, and then avoided and planned around before it started costing standing time and meant your lads didn't make their day right.
Jacob Austin 00:26:07 And if you think about it, it isn't just a job for supervisors. Perhaps that's what they're there for. But if everybody on the site communicates effectively about problems that they can see on the horizon and everything could be ironed out before people got to that work, just imagine how sweetly that project is going to run. There are also key points in the project that you want to communicate proactively about as well. These are around your start date and finish date to any sections of work, and of course around the practical completion of your scope. It rarely seems to happen on site that we get subcontractors offering their work for practical completion in any form or fashion anyway. But considering that this is the trigger for releasing retention, and in some cases it's the trigger for your final account process. You ought to be damn sure that you are communicating about practical completion. These are important financial milestones for you, so why leave them to chance? And if you followed the guidance given earlier about communicating around changes in instructions, the final account process itself should be relatively straightforward.
Jacob Austin 00:27:14 There are always some items to negotiate on, but you can help yourself by making sure there's no unexpected surprises. This means speaking up when you think there's extra cost involved or potential delay. It means including those build ups to your variations in your applications, as we mentioned, and clearly showing a forecast final account. Now, when it comes to negotiating that final account, that proactive collation of your documents into your application is going to help you a lot. But why not include a status column on your variations tab so that you can show which ones have been agreed and which ones might need still to be resolved. Grind them off or highlight them. Make it clear what needs to be spoken about. And that way you can make any final account meeting productive to try and secure payment for what's outstanding and leaving the uncontested items aside as a given. And finally, we get into defects and snagging the defects liability or the rectification period can be the point that makes or breaks the client's perception of a contractor. And this is where a lot of people let themselves down.
Jacob Austin 00:28:22 It can be difficult to arrange labor to get back to a particular site if it's just for a small ad hoc visit, and particularly when it's going to cost you money rather than earning money. But dragging your heels about this is really damaging for the client relationship. This is the point when they've got their shiny new building and they just want to enjoy it. Having a defect that they've got to look at day after day or something that doesn't work. Perhaps a door handle that's fallen off. It ruins that enjoyment of the building, no matter how small you might think that defect is. And it's worse when defects get recorded and then nothing seems to happen with them. So the best thing that you can do with this is to respond as quickly as you can, even if it is only to set expectations as to when you can get there. Bearing in mind that you might have signed up to some particular response times or maintenance times for various defects within your subcontract, so you'll be expected to comply with those as a minimum.
Jacob Austin 00:29:18 But the important thing is to communicate. This is when I can come to do an inspection. This is when the part will become available. This is when I can revisit to finish off the install. These communications are key to keeping the client happy. As long as they feel informed, they will usually work with you to get the problem resolved. Okay, and that friend concludes all I've got to say about communication for subcontractors. For the time being, we've explored why good communication underpins everything in the subcontracting forum and by adopting some robust strategies like using rfis and daily diaries can help you communicate effectively. And we've also discussed some good email etiquette and how to sidestep another round of email. Tennis with Novak Djokovic. So I hope that helps today. My mission, as ever with this podcast, is to help the million SME contractors working out there in our industry. So if you've taken some value away from today's episode, I'd love it if you'd share the show and pass that value on to somebody else who might benefit from hearing it.
Jacob Austin 00:30:23 And of course, subscribe yourself if you haven't already. And thanks for tuning in. If you want to learn more, please do find us at www.QS.zone and watch out for us again on your favourite socials at @QS.zone. Thanks again! I've been Jacob Austin and you've been awesome!
