Monday morning, a new gang at the gate
A dryliner your QS placed an order with last week turns up on site. The site manager asks the office whether they are approved. Someone searches the shared drive and finds a public liability certificate from two years ago, no employer's liability certificate and a bank details form in an email thread. The dryliner says they sent everything to the buyer. The buyer is on holiday.
Multiply that by every trade on every job, and a surprising part of your commercial and admin time goes on chasing, filing and re-checking documents for firms you have used for years.
Why the folder never stays current
Documents are collected once, at the start of a relationship, and then left. Insurances renew every year on different dates. Accreditation schemes renew on their own cycles. Company details change. Nobody gets a reminder, so the folder quietly goes stale.
- Documents arrive as email attachments to whoever asked for them.
- Expiry dates are not recorded anywhere except on the certificate itself.
- Site teams cannot see approval status without phoning the office.
- The same firm is asked for the same documents by different buyers.
- Bank detail changes arrive by email with no call-back check, which is how payment fraud gets in.
What the gaps cost
Orders get placed with firms whose cover has lapsed, and nobody knows until a claim or an audit. Clients and frameworks ask for evidence of your supply chain checks, and building that pack by hand takes days. Admin staff spend hours each week on chasing emails. What your policy requires from each subcontractor is your decision, and your insurers and advisers set it; the problem we fix is knowing, at any moment, who meets it.
The subcontractor portal we build
- Each subcontractor gets a secure link to their own record, where they upload insurance certificates, accreditations and company details once.
- Documents are read on upload: insurer, policy type, cover level and expiry are extracted and shown back to the subcontractor to confirm.
- Your requirements per trade are set as rules, for example the insurances and levels your policy asks for a groundworker compared with a decorator.
- Each firm shows a status: approved, missing items, or expiring soon, with the reason.
- Reminders go to the subcontractor before expiry, then escalate to your buyer if nothing arrives.
- Bank detail changes are held until a named person confirms them by phone on a number already on file.
- Status is visible when an order is raised in your job costing system and on the site manager's phone at the gate.
| Document | What we read from it | What happens near expiry |
|---|---|---|
| Public and employer's liability | Insurer, cover level, expiry | Reminder, then buyer alerted |
| Professional indemnity (design trades) | Cover level, expiry | Reminder, then buyer alerted |
| Accreditations such as Constructionline or CHAS | Scheme, level, expiry | Reminder to renew |
| Company and CIS details | Registration, UTR, trading name | Checked on change |
| Bank details | Account and sort code | Held until call-back confirmed |
A supply chain you can see
Subcontractors keep their own documents current because the portal asks them to, not your admin team. Buyers see approval status when they place an order. Site managers see it at the gate. When a client or framework asks for supply chain evidence, it is a report rather than a week of searching. And bank detail changes stop being a risk hidden in an inbox.
It also changes the conversation with good subcontractors. Firms that keep their records current are easy to order from, and your buyers can see at a glance which firms on a tender list are ready to start. The ones that never answer a reminder show themselves early, before they are on your programme rather than after.
Signs your subcontractor records need this
- Insurance certificates are filed in a shared drive by whoever received them.
- You find out cover has lapsed after the event.
- Site teams phone the office to ask if a firm is approved.
- Subcontractors complain they are asked for the same documents repeatedly.
- Bank detail changes are accepted by email.