Winning Subcontract Work

Who actually engages subbies

"Subcontracting" gets talked about as though it means one thing. In practice there are half a dozen quite different buyers, and they want different things from you:

Pick two or three that suit the work you actually want. Chasing all of them at once means being unimpressive to everyone, and the reporting demands of an insurance network are a different business from doing fit-off for a builder.

What they're actually buying

New subbies assume the pitch is quality and price. It isn't. Anyone hiring a subbie has been let down before, and what they're buying is the absence of that. In rough order:

• You turn up when you said. More work is lost over a missed Tuesday than over a rate.
• You answer your phone. The subbie who picks up gets the next job. This is not complicated and it is remarkably rare.
• Your paperwork arrives complete. Certificates, SWMS, photos, invoices with the right job reference. Every gap is admin work you've handed to them.
• You don't create problems for the trades after you. The bloke who leaves it right for the next trade gets remembered by everyone on that site.
• You raise issues early. A problem flagged Wednesday is manageable. The same problem discovered at handover is a fight.
• No safety incidents and no cowboy behaviour — because your conduct on their site lands on their record.

Price matters, but it's the filter rather than the decision. Being the cheapest gets you a first job and a reputation as the cheap option; being the reliable one gets you the phone call before anyone else is asked.

Getting on the list

1. Make a target list of twenty. Builders and businesses operating in your area, at your scale. Drive past sites and read the signage. Ten realistic targets beats a mass email to a hundred.
2. Get your compliance pack together first. Licence, certificate of currency for public liability, injury cover, ABN and entity details, tickets, SWMS templates, and a page of relevant jobs with photos. Having it ready when they ask is itself the demonstration.
3. Find the right person. The site supervisor, the contracts administrator, or the owner — not the info@ address. On a smaller builder it's whoever answers, and one direct conversation beats twenty emails.
4. Approach at the right moment. Early in a week, not at 4pm Friday. And be specific: what you do, where you work, what you can take on, when you're available. Vague availability reads as no availability.
5. Take the awkward first job. The fill-in, the one someone dropped, the small job nobody wants. That's the audition, and doing it excellently is the entire strategy.
6. Ask for the next one. Directly, on the day you finish. "That went well — what have you got coming up?" Most tradies never ask, then wonder why the phone didn't ring.

What keeps you on the list

Winning the first job is the easy part. Businesses that build a steady subcontract book do the unglamorous things consistently:

• Prequalification kept current. When your certificate of currency expires, you come off the system — often without anyone telling you.
• SWMS and safety documents per job, submitted before you start, not chased out of you on the morning.
• Photos and completion records attached to the job. For maintenance and insurance work this is most of what you're being paid for.
• Invoices that match the agreed scope and reference their job number. Sloppy claims are the most common reason a good subbie gets quietly dropped.
• Variations raised in writing before you do the work, every time. Doing extra work on a nod and billing for it later damages the relationship even when you're right.
• Predictable capacity. Being honest that you can't take something this week keeps you on the list. Saying yes and letting them down does not.

Pricing it so it's worth having

Subcontract rates sit below what you'd charge a homeowner for the same hour, and that's not necessarily a bad deal — you're not paying to generate the lead, not quoting five jobs to win one, and not managing the client. But it only works if you know your own numbers going in.

• Know your break-even rate first. Our charge-out rate guide works it out from your overheads and genuinely chargeable hours. A subcontract rate below break-even is a job you're paying to do.
• Count the real chargeable proportion. Site inductions, waiting on other trades, travel between sites and the reporting all eat hours you can't bill.
• Price the paperwork. Insurance and facilities work carries reporting that can take as long as some of the jobs. Build it into the rate rather than discovering it in month two.
• Read the payment terms before the rate. Long terms are a real cost to a small business, and they're often more negotiable than the rate is.
• Watch for retention and back-charges. Money held until a defects period ends, or deducted for someone else's damage, changes what the job actually pays.
• Understand what's included. Materials, plant, access equipment, waste removal and making good are frequently assumed by one party and priced by neither.

The risks worth naming

• Concentration. When one head contractor is most of your revenue, you don't have a customer — you have an employer who can end it without notice and owes you nothing.
• Payment risk. If they don't get paid, you'll feel it. Know who you're contracting with, watch how they pay from the first invoice, and take a slow payer seriously the first time rather than the third.
• You become the flexible one. When the program slips, someone absorbs it. Make sure the agreement says who.
• Your own work gets squeezed. Subcontract work is easy to say yes to and slowly crowds out the direct clients who pay better and are yours to keep. Book your own jobs first and fill the gaps.
• Classification. A long-running arrangement where you work only for one business, on their roster, in their gear can stop looking like contracting. Our guide on subcontractor or employee covers what that turns on and why it matters.

Frequently asked questions