Cancelled shift pay: the time you told them now matters
The rain stopped the pour and two lads were sent home at ten past seven. Soon that will carry a price — and you will be asked when exactly you told them.
Read noteFIELD NOTES · CHRIS HALESFrom the work.
From the work.
For the curious.
Notes on software, systems and the things that actually happen inside a construction business.
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Cyber Essentials: listing what your firm actually runs on
Getting the certificate takes a fortnight. Answering the first question — what does this business actually run on? — is where most construction firms come unstuck, and it matters more.
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Making Tax Digital: the gross figures only you hold
From April, self-employed subcontractors report to HMRC every quarter. The income figure they need is gross, not what landed in the bank — which means four times a year they come to you for statements.
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CIS gross payment status and the “should have known” test
CIS now has a ‘should have known’ test. Lose gross payment status and you wait five years to get it back. The only defence is evidence you kept at the time.
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Third-party harassment: your liability from 30 October
From 30 October you are liable when a client, a driver or another firm’s operative harasses one of your people. The defence is evidence, and most contractors haven’t got any.
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Site photo records: proving what went in behind the plaster
The photographs get taken. They just end up in a camera roll nobody can search, and by the time the assessor asks for them the wall has been closed up for months.
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Invoice fraud: the email that changed the bank details
An email says your subcontractor’s bank has changed. The refund rules you’ve heard about don’t cover a firm your size — and the payment run never gets a name check.
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Building Safety Levy: which floor area do you pay on?
The Building Safety Levy starts in October. It prices your floor areas — and in most firms three different floor areas exist, none of them owned by anybody.
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Waste descriptions and EWC codes the tip now needs
A national waste database goes live in October. The obligation sits with the tip, not with you — but it can’t be met without facts that only your site holds.
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VAT reverse charge for construction: still getting it wrong
Since March 2021 most business-to-business building work shouldn’t carry VAT at all. HMRC spent years being patient about the errors. That’s over — and the fix is a data problem, not a tax one.
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Payment practices reporting: check a client before you bid
Every large contractor files its payment record with the government twice a year — average days, late percentages, now retentions too. It’s public, free, and nobody checks it before tendering.
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UK e-invoicing: why a PDF stops being a VAT invoice
From April 2029 a PDF in an email stops counting as a VAT invoice. There’s nothing to buy yet — but the deadline points at a problem your invoicing already has.
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Late payment interest: the 8% nobody in your office claims
The 1998 Act gave you interest on every late payment. A new bill in the Lords adds teeth. Neither helps while nobody in the business can say which payments are actually late.
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Job costing: the accounts can’t say which jobs made money
The accounts tell you the company made money. They can’t tell you which jobs did. Why job-level margin stays invisible until the final account — and what fixes it.
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Building Safety Levy: the one date that decides if you pay
From 1 October 2026, new residential schemes in England pay a levy by the square metre. The date on your building control application decides whether yours do.
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Day-one sick pay: your absence records aren’t ready
The waiting days are gone. Every day of sickness is now money your payroll owes — and in most firms, the only record is a text at ten to seven.
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Right to work checks on subcontractors: required from October
From October, firms that engage individual subcontractors must check they’re allowed to work in the UK. The check takes five minutes. Doing it every time is the real problem.
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Construction prequalification: stop rewriting the same PQQ
The industry standardised prequalification twice, and your office still loses two days per tender finding the same PDFs. The fix isn’t a bid platform. It’s a library.
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CITB grants: the levy collects itself, the grant doesn’t
The CITB levy collects itself. The grant doesn’t claim itself — and from January 2026 the funding rules reward firms that plan training, not firms that book it the Tuesday before.
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Steel tariffs: what the quota cut does to a fixed price
From 1 July, tariff-free steel import quotas were cut roughly in half and the out-of-quota duty doubled to 50 per cent. You don’t import steel. Your fixed price feels it anyway.
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Awaab’s Law: the repair clock now runs on your job sheet
Since October 2025, social landlords must fix hazards to a legal clock — and they deliver that work through contractors. What it means for your job sheets and your next tender.
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Proving delay: the records an extension of time needs
When a job overruns, the contract asks one question: can you prove what caused the delay? In most firms the answer lives in WhatsApp and one man’s memory.
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Umbrella company PAYE: the unpaid tax that lands on you
New rules make agencies — and sometimes the firms hiring the labour — liable when an umbrella company fails to pay PAYE. Why the chain behind your agency workers now needs a proper record.
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Holiday pay records: the six-year duty most firms missed
A duty that arrived quietly in April: keep records proving every worker’s holiday and holiday pay, for six years. In most construction firms that record is a spreadsheet and a text thread.
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Digital waste tracking: what October means for builders
Digital waste tracking becomes mandatory for permitted waste sites this October. It doesn’t apply to most builders — but it puts half your waste record in a regulator’s database.
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CIS nil returns: HMRC wants one even if you paid nobody
A £100 penalty for a month in which nothing happened. The CIS nil return is back, and it catches exactly the firms with the least reason to be thinking about subcontractors.
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Construction insolvency: what one customer failing costs you
In the twelve months to May 2026, 3,803 construction firms went under in England and Wales. The question isn’t whether it happens near you. It’s how fast you’d know the cost.
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No signed contract? A WhatsApp thread can still bind you
A developer in Norwich learned that a WhatsApp thread was the contract — and its own subcontract, sent later, governed nothing. Yours could learn the same lesson much cheaper.
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Three-way matching: delivery tickets your invoices never meet
The office pays what the merchant sends because it has nothing to check against. Why delivery tickets and invoices never meet, and the ten-second habit that fixes it.
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Off-hiring plant: the call nobody made is still billing
The excavator stopped digging days ago. It’s still on hire, still billing, because nobody sent the off-hire. The leak isn’t the machine — it’s the phone call nobody made.
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CSCS card expiry: a drawer of photos isn’t a system
A drawer of card photos tells you a card exists, not that it’s about to run out. As renewals pile up, here’s why a spreadsheet loses and what watches the dates instead.
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CIS deduction rates: when 20% should have been 30%
CIS makes you withhold tax from subcontractors and file a return by the 19th each month. The rate isn’t yours to guess — and a stale one costs you, not them.
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Pay less notices: the deadline that makes a wrong bill payable
A subcontractor sends an inflated application. Your surveyor means to query it, then gets pulled away. Three weeks on, an adjudicator says you owe the lot. Here is the deadline that did it.
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Construction variations: how extra work vanishes unpaid
The client points at a wall and asks if it can move. Your site manager says yes. Three months later, nobody can prove it happened. How variations vanish — and what stops them.
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Construction retentions: the ban won’t release what’s held
The government wants to ban retentions. That won’t release the money already held against your finished jobs. Here’s why retention cash goes missing, and the small purpose-built register that collects it.
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The golden thread: a commercial problem before a legal one
Most mid-market firms assume the golden thread is somebody else’s problem. The legal duty may sit elsewhere — but the commercial demand for fast, structured records is already flowing down to you.
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Is your business ready for custom software? An honest test
Most businesses that ask this question aren’t ready yet. That’s not a sales pitch dressed up as honesty. It’s actually the answer. Here’s a way to tell from where you sit.
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AI in construction admin: what it actually does well
Most of what’s being written about AI in construction right now is sales material. There’s a smaller, more useful question underneath the hype: where does AI add real value in a construction office, and how should it be set up to do so safely?
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Your office manager is your most expensive developer
Your office manager is a software developer. They might not call themselves one. But if you look at what they actually do all week, a significant chunk of their job is building, fixing, and maintaining software inside your business.
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Construction spreadsheets: the five, and where each breaks
Walk into any mid-market construction firm and ask the office team to show you how the business actually runs. You won’t be shown software. You’ll be shown spreadsheets. Here are the five that quietly run a firm, and where each one starts to fall apart.
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Why construction quotes take a week to go out
Ask any mid-market construction MD how long it takes them to send a quote, and they’ll tell you a number that’s longer than they’d like and shorter than the truth. The hidden queue is the cause.
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Custom construction software, done properly
The phrase “custom software” has a bad reputation in mid-market construction. The reputation is earned — but the failure mode isn’t bespoke itself. It’s a specific way of doing it that breaks predictably.
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The ten-module problem: paying for software you don’t use
Most mid-market construction firms are paying for software they barely use. The bit they don’t use is hidden inside the same quarterly invoice as the bit they do, which is why it’s so easy to miss.
Read noteWhy a CRM isn’t what your construction business needs
A civil engineering MD called me last spring. He’d been told he needed a CRM. Three different IT consultants had told him the same thing. None of the problems he wanted solved were CRM problems.
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