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Construction & Contractors

Materials across sites, BQ vs actuals, plant and equipment custody, retention money, and subcontractor control for Kenyan builders.

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15 articles in construction and contracting.

Construction & Contractors 12 min

The Valuation Is Not a Timesheet

A contractor bills measured work against a bill of quantities, less retention, on a certificate. A project system bills hours times a rate. Both are called invoicing and no setting turns one into the other — what each does, and how to run them alongside each other honestly.

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Construction & Contractors 12 min

The Fourth Time You Build the Same Thing

The second identical warehouse is planned from memory, the third from the second, badly, by whoever still has the file — and every retyping loses the task that was added because something went wrong. What a template carries, and the hour of dating you must do before trusting the programme.

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Construction & Contractors 12 min

The Inspection That Stopped Recurring

A weekly scaffold check runs for four months and then stops, because recurrence happens on completion rather than on a date. Nothing is overdue and nothing is flagged — the series is absent rather than late. Why that is the right default for a site, and what it costs you.

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Construction & Contractors 12 min

Paid for the Hours the Site Logged

Pay from a log and the log starts being written carefully — and creatively, by the same people, for the same reason. What a payout reconciles at the moment of posting, why the direct route records a payment rather than making one, and the lock that does not cover the clock you are paying from.

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Construction & Contractors 12 min

The Chain That Decides Your Finish Date

Six activities are behind and everybody has a reason. Two of them probably have three weeks of float and nobody in the room knows which two. The arithmetic that answers it, and the five things it does not account for — including the undated task that silently counts as one day.

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Construction & Contractors 16 min

The Certificate Expired and the Work Carried On

You checked the WIBA policy, the NCA registration and the tax compliance certificate before they came on site. Eight months later one has lapsed and nothing knows — because the reminder machinery is pointed at a different module.

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Construction & Contractors 15 min

The Twelve Months After You Leave Site

The only phase of a contract with cost and no production. The team has demobilised, the subcontractors are paid, and every repair from here comes straight out of margin — including the four you were never liable for.

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Construction & Contractors 15 min

Preliminaries: The Cost That Accrues While You Wait

Measured work is priced by the unit and consumed by the unit. Preliminaries are priced by the contract and consumed by the week — which is why a job that hit every material target still lost money on a six-week delay.

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Construction & Contractors 12 min

The Two Halves of a Contractor's System: Valuation and Materials

Contractors buy the half that argues for money and improvise the half that spends it. A worked look at where a thin margin actually goes — a variation claim lost to a notice period, and plant hired in that the business already owned.

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Construction & Contractors 11 min

Subcontractors & Certificates: Paying for Work That Was Actually Done

The largest cost category on most projects has the weakest evidence behind it. Valuing work instead of processing a claim, comparing issued materials against valued progress, and mirroring retention on both sides of the chain.

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Construction & Contractors 11 min

Variations & Claims: The Work Nobody Priced

Variations are lost in small pieces, agreed on site under pressure and argued about at final account. Why the instruction matters more than the price, the five-line note that survives, and why coded costs settle higher than estimates.

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Construction & Contractors 8 min

Site Materials Control: Stopping the Leak Between Store and Slab

Materials are the biggest job cost and the easiest to lose — not dramatic theft, a hundred small unmeasured gaps. Close them by measuring flow, not suspecting people.

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Construction & Contractors 8 min

BQ vs Actuals: Job Costing That Tells the Truth on Site

The BQ is a promise made at tender; the site is where it meets reality. What live job costing takes, what a task-per-element gets you, and the line-level comparison that stays yours to make.

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Construction & Contractors 8 min

Plant & Equipment Custody: Tracking Assets That Move Every Week

A contractor's plant is capital designed to move — which is why it goes idle, goes missing, and breaks down unplanned. Custody, movement history, and service discipline.

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Construction & Contractors 10 min

Construction ERP in Kenya: Materials, Sites, Plant & Retention (2026)

A contractor runs three businesses at once — materials, plant, and fixed-price promises. Where the money leaks on a Kenyan site, and how the profitable ones keep all three under control.

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