Yes the construction world revolves around contracts. Usually the GC is trying to create verbiage as broad as possible to convince a sub they agreed to it within their scope. Stop. Your subs aren’t stupid and the more you treat them as such the more they will look for ways to recoup money the GC tries to wring out of them. For example, not being paid for months after 200K worth of work and expenses isn’t cool. Also not cool when you’re promised a check that you are counting on for payroll only to tell the sub the following week that the checks STILL have not gone out. Don’t threaten delay notices when you haven’t paid what you should when you should. Also make sure that your contracts are also narrow enough to actually capture the actual work. For example don’t forget to leave out the word Brick when half the contract is based on brick.
Technically the sub could push for a change order but no sub wants to screw a partner they are working with but really the GCs need to look at subs as partners trying to deliver a quality product and not as slaves meant to be pushed and bullied around. If you haven’t noticed this website is dedicated to helping stem some of this behavior. GCs want to rate their subs. Subs conversely need to rate the GCs.
