Jake Austin 00:00:00 Hi there all! Jacob Austin here. And welcome to episode 154 of The Subcontractors Blueprint, the show where subcontractors learn how to ensure profitability, improve cash flow and grow their business. Today's episode is continuing our disputes mini series, and it's focusing in on what it actually takes to win an adjudication. That means the records you build in the background, capturing the moments that matter as they happen, and how to hand an adjudicator a case that they can follow with their eyes shut. So let's dig in. I think I've said one sentence more than anything else in this series. You win on your records, not on being right. And every single time I've said exactly that and move straight on. Well, today we're stopping and proving it, because that sentence is the whole difference between the firm that gets paid and the firm that merely was owed. And almost none of it happens in the adjudication. It happens months earlier with the boring stuff that nobody wants to do. Everything that we've done in this series so far leans on this one thing that when the moment comes, you've got the goods the crystallized dispute, the referral, the defense, the enforcement all of it rests on you.
Jake Austin 00:01:39 Being able to prove what you say and prove is not the same as being right. Let me give you a hard example to underscore the point. Two subcontractors. Identical entitlement. Both of them are owed 160 grand for, let's say, the same kind of work. One of them kept records as they went and knew how to lay them out, and the other didn't. The first gets paid in full. The second loses half of it. The same money owed. Same facts. The only difference has been the background work and the packaging. Nothing whatsoever due to who was right. So here's the perspective that I want to land from today's episode. The dispute is not 1 in 28 days. It's 1 in 18 minutes before that, in the habits and then the handful of days you spend packaging it up. So it makes sense by the time you're standing in the adjudication, the result is largely already baked. Today is about baking it in your favor long before you need to rely on it. Let's start with records themselves.
Jake Austin 00:02:48 There's one word here that matters more than any other contemporaneous. That just means, at the time, a note written on the day that something actually happens that is worth ten times. A beautifully argued story written 18 months later for a dispute. Why? Because that note, made at the time, wasn't made for the fight. Nobody's posturing. It's just the facts. What happened? Written down as it happened. An adjudicator will put far more trust in that than anything else. They're not going to trust your memory, and they're really not going to trust a narrative that's obviously been built to win. Recollections can warp over time, but records made on the day a cast iron and they're worth gold. So what moments do you actually have to capture? Here are the ones that win and lose disputes, instructions and variations. This is the single most important habit in the whole episode. The moment somebody tells you to do something that's different from the contract. You capture it better than just capturing it. Is confirming it in writing that same day, a short email as instructed by Dave on site.
Jake Austin 00:04:03 This morning we're moving. The riser will be treating this as a variation. Please let us know if that isn't your understanding. That one email sent the day it happens wins variation disputes before they're even turned into disputes that can avoid the whole hassle and an argument and ultimately adjudication. Because months later, when the site manager can swear blind that they never instructed it, there it is. Dated, unanswered. Factual and devastating to the contractor. The next thing is delay and disruption. When something stops you or slows you down, you capture it. That day. What happens? What held it up? Whose fault it was? Because Delay claims die on a vague memory, but you can build them on daily live records. A site diary that's written in every single day is worth more than any witness statement that you can cobble together after the event. The next thing that's important is the things that disappear. This is crucial on a live site. We're talking things like ground conditions, anything that gets covered with plaster or paint that you can't see after the fact.
Jake Austin 00:05:17 Another trades defective work that you're being told to build on top of access you're promised on a given day, but you never got photograph it, note it the day you found it. Because on a live job, that kind of evidence can never be taken again. It gets covered up, built over, made good, and then it's gone forever and you need to capture it before it disappears. The theme that runs through all of that, none of it is heroic. None of it is difficult. It's just habit. The daily site diary. Written every day. Photos taken every week from the same fixed spot so he can show progress over time. Verbal instructions confirmed the same afternoon. Every time without fail. It's boring. It's daily, but it's the entire game. The firm that does that looks organised and honest. The firm that's trying to cobble it together and reconstruct it all afterwards. Looks like they're making it up, because frankly, it is. Here's the line that you need to remember. You're not keeping records to win a dispute that you're in.
Jake Austin 00:06:28 You're keeping records to prevent one. And maybe so that if a dispute ever comes, you've got the facts and you've already won it. Now, the second half is the bit that almost nobody teaches, and it's exactly where good cases can go down the Swanee Presentation. So you've got the records and you're owed the money. Now you have to hand it all over to an adjudicator to make a decision. So do something for just a minute for me. Let's pretend you're sat in the chair in the adjudicators chair for a minute. You, as the adjudicator, have never seen this job in your life. And you've got 28 days to make a decision over who's right or wrong on this particular argument. It's quite possible that you've got a day job on top of making this decision, and a bundle lands on your desk. That's 600, maybe 800 pages thick, maybe more. Now be honest. Are you going to lovingly hunt through all of that paperwork for the one email that proves that the sub is right, and that underscores their point in all likeliness? You're not.
Jake Austin 00:07:41 You haven't got the time. And if you can't find it, then as far as your decision goes, it doesn't exist. That is the single most important idea to take away from this half of the episode. Your proof isn't going to be judged on whether it's in the bundle somewhere. It's judged on whether a tired stranger can put their hands on it in a couple of minutes. From your reams of evidence. Their effort is your problem to solve, not theirs. Your whole job start to finish is to lead them through the argument by the hand, straight to the money. So how do you do that concretely? First, start with the story a short, clear, plain narrative of what happened and why you're owed short sentences. This doesn't have to be legal. Showing off complex language. The adjudicators should be able to understand your entire case from the narrative alone, before they open a single appendix. Then you build a schedule. This is the spine of a good claim, and it even has a name.
Jake Austin 00:08:50 The Scotch schedule. On the face of it. It's just a table. One row for each item that you're claiming, showing what it is, how much it's worth, the basis for it. And this is the magic column exactly where the proof lives. So a messy variation claim becomes a clean table that the adjudicator can work their way straight down the line, item by item. And for every single line, there's a pointer telling them precisely where to look for the supporting document. The third thing is signposting. And signposting is everything. Here. Every claim you make points to proof that confirms it. Not vaguely, but precisely. We were instructed to move the riser on the 3rd of March and then in brackets. Appendix four, page 12, paragraph six. The adjudicator reads your point, sees the pointer, flips to page 12 and there it is. You never, ever make them search for it. Pinpoint it. Appendix and page paragraph. If it's a particularly long appendix, because a precise reference says I'm confident I can back up my bull.
Jake Austin 00:10:05 Go and look for yourself. A vague reference says, yeah, I might have some evidence. Don't look too closely at it. Now that signposting only works if the bundle behind it is properly organized. That means lining all your appendices up in a logical order, with an index at the front continuous page number, so that an appendix can be easily identified. Let's say appendix for page 12 actually lands somewhere real. Put tabs on it so that the adjudicator can flick straight through it. This isn't just admin for the sake of admin. It's a thing that makes every single pointer in your schedule actually work. And the part that's tricky here is you need to curate your evidence, not dump it when you're owed money and you're angry about it. The temptation can be to throw everything into the mix. All of it. It's all there, you tell yourself. But if your killer email that evidences everything is sat in 2000 pages of an undifferentiated heap, it's lost and you've buried your own best evidence with your own two hands.
Jake Austin 00:11:16 Printing it all off 400 relevant and well-ordered pages are going to meet 4000 padded out ones every time. Volume isn't the strength. Being precise. Making everything findable is the strength. So select the evidence that proves each point and put it exactly where the adjudicator is going to look for it. Now let me join the two halves of today together, because this is the bit that turns good records and slick presentation into the actual win. I'm calling it the Golden Thread. It's the idea that the adjudicator should be able to take any single item you're claiming, and trace it cleanly from the start, all the way through to the very end, without you in the room and without breaking a sweat. Let's show you what that looks like for one line. Let's say we've got variation 12, some extra ductwork that you've been told to run. Here's the thread. First, the instruction Dave's email of the 3rd of March telling you to do it. Appendix four, page 12. Then the proof that you did it. The dated photograph of the finished run.
Jake Austin 00:12:26 Appendix nine, page three. Then the value, the measure and the rate sitting on row 12 of your schedule one item 3 or 4 dots. And every single dot joined to the next one. An adjudicator looking at that doesn't have to trust you and they don't have to go digging. They just follow the thread through, instructed, done, valued, proven. And then they award it because there's nothing to argue with. Now let's pretend we're looking at the reverse of that where claims go to die. That failure starts with a broken thread, a value on your schedule with no instruction sitting behind it. So it looks like you've invented the work, or you've just done it off your own bat. An instruction in the file with no record that you ever did the job. Maybe a photo of some work with no measure, no rate, no calculation so somebody can put a price on it. Anyone got missing, and the rest of the chain that it links to just falls apart. And the adjudicator isn't there to join the dots for them.
Jake Austin 00:13:34 They knock them straight out. Put a number on what that might cost you. If a fifth of your lines have got a broken thread somewhere, you don't lose a fifth of the argument. You lose a fifth of the money across the board, assuming they're all equal events. If that string is broken on the biggest event. Think what that means to you on a hundred grand account. £20,000 could be gone. Not because you've not owned it, because you don't join the dots on the page. And that's exactly why you need both sides of the coin. The background habit is what puts the dots on the page in the first place. The instruction confirmed on the day. The photo taken of the finished work. The presentation then joins the dots up the schedule and the pinpoint references. Pause each dot through to the next. Records with no presentation is just a pile of dots that nobody can connect. Presentation with no records. It's just a lovely thread with nothing hanging from it. You need everything. Join together all the dots.
Jake Austin 00:14:42 So when you build a claim, go through it line by line and ask one question of every single item. Can the adjudicator get, from what I say a mode? Back to the instruction. Back to the proof. I did the work back to the price without once having to ask me a thing. If they can, then that item is bullet proof. If they can't, then good. Your test has found a hole that you can plug before they get to it, and you've still got time to fill it. Running that same check through every line of your claim is the difference between the claim that stands up and a claim that leaks money. Now, of course, because I don't want you to walk away with the wrong lesson here. Presentation is a multiplier. It's not a magic trick. A beautifully bound up and perfectly indexed bundle with nothing real inside, it is still nothing. Slick packaging isn't going to manufacture an entitlement that you haven't got, and it can't conjure up records that you haven't made.
Jake Austin 00:15:48 And that's why you need both sides of that coin today. The background habit giving you the evidence, giving you what you need to show the adjudicator and the presentation, making it land. Let me illustrate this with an example. So we've got two subcontractors. Both are owed 60 grand for variations in a fitout. Both have genuinely owed the money and they've completed it. They've got real entitlement. Subcontractor A does what a lot of people do. When the dispute finally blows up, they sit down, they try and reconstruct the whole thing. The instructions were mostly verbal, so there's nothing solid to point at, and the emails are scattered across three different inboxes. Some of the SHS has got, some are working foremen and one their site manager. They haven't got a schedule, so in a fit of frustration, they dump 800 pages of unsorted correspondence together in a file in roughly date order, with a covering letter and a claim that you can feel the anger of jumping off the page. The adjudicator has got 28 days, but they genuinely can't tell which variation was instructed by who or when, or find the proof for half of them and where they can't see it clearly, those items simply fail.
Jake Austin 00:17:12 So sub EA loses half of their claim, not because they weren't owed the money, but because they put together a slapdash document and the adjudicator couldn't find their way through it. Now. So be the same 60 grand, but every variation was confirmed by email the day it happened. They've got a dated photo log, and they've got all of the build ups to the charges that they're claiming. When the dispute comes, they build a Scott schedule. Every variation one row, the amount, the basis, and then pinpoint references confirming where to find the email, the photo, the build up or sitting in a tabbed indexed page numbered bundle with a clean written narrative on top of it. The adjudicator reads the narrative. They generate a bit of sympathy, and then they follow through the schedule, following each pointer following the audit trail. Seeing clear, clean proof for every line and awards all the money. Same entitlement, same money. Owed one. Working a little bit smarter but no harder. Has walked away with the 60 grand they were looking for.
Jake Austin 00:18:27 and the other one half of it. The difference is entirely in that boring habit and the careful packaging, but there's no more secret to it than that. So this week on a live job, start the habit today. Not when a dispute is looming. Site diary every day. Verbal instructions confirmed in writing the same afternoon. Photos of finished work as you hand them over and reference photos from the same point every single week. Capture the things that vanish the day that you see them. Conditions delay disruption before they're built over and covered forever. Now, key things to take away from today's episode. You win on records not being right. This is the episode that funds every other one in the series. Contemporaneous is everything a note made on the day that something happens. Beats a story written for your dispute because it wasn't made for the fight. It purely exists to be evidence, not to spin a yarn. Confirm every verbal instruction the same day that one habit wins. Variation disputes before they get to be disputes.
Jake Austin 00:19:43 Capture important milestones. When you start in a particular area, when you finish the things that vanish, conditions delay disruption before it's built over quality records and that all important daily site diary that records useful facts, not just the weather. Present your argument for the adjudicator, not for yourself. Picture a tired stranger with 28 days who knows nothing about your job. If they can't understand your argument and find your proof, it might as well not exist. So build your claim with that person in mind. Pinpoint references. Straight to the evidence. Lead them by hand to the money. Curate your documents. Don't dump. Find ability and accuracy beats volume. Your best email, if it can't be found in a 2300 page heap, is as useless as not having it. Presentation multiplies good records, but it doesn't manufacture them. So you need to get the habit and you need to do the daily reps. So that's what it actually takes to win. Not being right, being ready and being clear. Next week we'll lift our heads up from adjudication altogether, and we'll look at some other methods of resolving a dispute as our mediation, expert determination, arbitration and the court.
Jake Austin 00:21:14 We'll think about when each one might actually beat adjudication and how to choose the right tool for the job instead of just reaching for the one that you know. Don't miss it. My mission with this podcast is to help the million SM contractors working out there in our industry. If you've taken some value away from today's episode, then I really need your help to share the show and to pass that value on to somebody else who'd benefit from hear it so that I can help as many people as possible. And thanks for tuning in. If you like what you've heard and you want to learn more, then please do find us at www.SubcontractorsBlueprint.UK. We're also on all your favourite socials again at @SubcontractorsBlueprint. And remember, miss the contract detail and the commercial risk falls on you. Thanks all. I've been Jacob Austin and you've been awesome.
