Starting a subcontract well: the trade project manager's first week
The signed subcontract arrives on Monday: 38 pages and a list of prime contract documents it incorporates, none of them attached. Your foreman wants to know when he starts and who he answers to. The general contractor's start-up meeting is two weeks away.
In the first week, read the signed subcontract and the parts of the prime contract it binds you to, and turn them into a scope sheet, your dates, a submittal list, a billing calendar and contacts on both sides. The subcontract is rarely the quote you priced: the general contractor adds conditions, and a clause incorporating the prime contract may bind you to terms you have never read. What you miss now often surfaces in month two, as a rejected invoice or a missed notice.
Week one, in order
- Compare the subcontract with your quote — scope, exclusions, price, anything added such as hoisting or cleanup — and raise differences in writing this week.
- Get the prime contract sections that flow down, with your specifications, drawings and addenda, and note what they add: notice periods, schedule updates, warranty, site rules.
- Check your dates against your crew plan, and say now if they do not work — see a schedule that does not work.
- List your submittals and long-lead materials, worked back from your start.
- Build the billing calendar: invoice date, holdback, and every attachment, with who signs what, and when.
- Swap contacts and authority: who may instruct, approve a change and receive a notice, on both sides.
- Brief your foreman in writing before mobilizing, and take open questions to the start-up meeting.
A statutory declaration is a solemn statement made before a notary or commissioner. On the Government of Canada's form, the contractor declares that it has discharged its lawful obligations to its workers, subcontractors and suppliers, except holdback properly retained, payments deferred by agreement and amounts withheld in a legitimate dispute; a false declaration contravenes the Criminal Code. Canada's industry-standard subcontractor form is used from the second progress payment on, and for the release of holdback.
Common mistakes
- Working from your quote instead of the signed subcontract.
- Assuming your notice periods match the prime contract's; yours may be shorter.
- Finding the billing requirements when the first invoice comes back.
- Letting the foreman take instructions from anyone who sounds senior.
Checklist
Ask the general contractor this week
- Which prime contract documents bind us, and may we have them?
- Who may instruct our crew, and who approves a change?
- What must every invoice include, and by which date?
- Which of our submittals do you need first?
Check your understanding
The general contractor's superintendent asks your foreman for "just a few hours" of backing for another trade. What should your brief have told him to do?
