Whose job is the making good?
The M&E contractor has chased cables through the new partitions. The holes in the plasterboard need making good. The M&E order says builder's work in connection is excluded. The drylining order says making good after other trades is excluded. Your site manager asks the QS, who checks both orders and finds both are right. Nobody priced it.
It is the same story with scaffold adaptions, skip hire for trade waste, protection of finished floors, temporary lighting, final cleans, and a dozen more small items that each sit between two packages.
Why gaps appear
Packages are built one at a time, often by different people, from the same tender documents. Each package is written to make sense on its own. Nobody sets every package side by side against the whole scope, so the items at the boundaries, the ones every subcontractor excludes as a matter of habit, fall through.
- Each package is drafted separately from the tender documents.
- Subcontractors' standard exclusions are accepted without cross-checking.
- Preliminaries items are assumed to be in someone's price.
- Late-placed packages are written in a hurry.
- Changes to one package are not checked against its neighbours.
What the gaps cost
Each gap is a small cost you did not price, paid either as a variation to a subcontractor or by your own labour. Together they eat margin. They also cause delay while the argument about whose job it is gets settled, and they sour relationships with subcontractors who feel pushed into doing unpaid work.
The scope matrix we build
- The specification, bill or activity schedule from the tender is read and broken into scope items, each with a reference to its source.
- Common boundary items are added from a checklist you control: builder's work, making good, protection, waste, attendances, temporary works items the design team specified, and so on.
- As each package is drafted, its inclusions and exclusions are read and mapped against the items.
- The matrix flags items claimed by no package, and items claimed by two, before orders are placed.
- Subcontractors' tender exclusions are compared against the matrix, so an exclusion that creates a gap is visible at the point of choosing a subcontractor.
- When a package changes, the matrix is updated and any new gap is flagged.
- Site managers can look up any item to see which package includes it, on a phone.
| Scope item | Drylining | M&E | Main contractor | Flag |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Builder's work holes | Excluded | Excluded | Not allocated | Gap |
| Making good after services | Excluded | Excluded | Not allocated | Gap |
| Protection of floors | Excluded | Excluded | Preliminaries | Covered |
| Trade waste removal | Included | Included | Preliminaries | Duplicate |
What goes in each package, and the wording of your subcontracts, stay decisions for your commercial team. The matrix shows them where the boundaries are.
Packages that fit together
Gaps are found at the desk, when they cost a line in a package, rather than on site, when they cost a variation and a week of argument. Duplicates are caught too, so you are not paying twice for the same item. Site managers can answer whose job is it themselves. And the matrix from one job becomes the starting checklist for the next.
Tendering gets better as well. When you compare subcontract quotes, the matrix shows which quotes carry exclusions that would leave a hole, so the cheapest price is not quietly the most expensive one. Your estimators can price the boundary items you know you will carry yourself, instead of finding them in the cost report halfway through the job.
Do scope gaps keep appearing on your jobs?
- Site finds work that no package includes.
- Making good and builder's work are regular arguments.
- Subcontractors' exclusions are accepted without cross-checking.
- You pay variations for items you assumed were included.
- Two packages sometimes include the same item.