What a work order should say
Read it before you sign it. The clauses that decide whether a job is profitable are rarely the ones anyone reads, and three lines are usually missing.
A work order is the document you will be held to for the next several months. It is usually read once, quickly, on the day it arrives, by somebody who is mostly checking the rate.
The rate is the least dangerous number in it. What decides whether the job makes money is a handful of clauses that read like boilerplate, and the difference between the two versions of a clause is often four words. The distinction between this document and a purchase order matters too, and work order or purchase order is worth being clear about before you read further.
What you are being asked to do#
Scope. What the work is. Usually written well, because it is the part everybody discussed.
Exclusions. What the work is not, which is more important and almost always thinner. Every item you assumed was somebody else's job needs to be named here. Cleaning up. Making good after another trade. Cutting and patching. Curing. Watchman. Storage. If it is not excluded, it is included, and the argument you lose is the one where both of you assumed the other had priced it.
Material. Who supplies each item, who transports it, who stores it, who insures it while it sits at site, and — the one that quietly costs money — who bears the wastage. If the order is silent on wastage on employer-supplied material, you will be debited for a figure somebody else calculates.
The rate, its unit, and what it includes. A rate means nothing until you know what it swallows. Taxes. Transport. Loading and unloading. Lifting to floor level. Scaffolding. Water. Power. Tools. Each of these has been the subject of a dispute on somebody's project this month. And the unit itself decides more than people expect — the unit of measure is the line to read twice, because a rate agreed in one unit and measured in another is not a small error. Whether the rate survives contact with the site is a separate question, covered in quoting a rate you can live with.
How you actually get paid#
Measurement method, and who measures. By what method is the quantity arrived at — from the drawing, or from the work as built? Deductions for openings, at what threshold? Who takes the measurement, who is present, and what happens when the two of you disagree. This clause decides the size of every bill you will ever raise on the job.
Variations. How extra work is ordered, and how it is priced. Two separate questions. Pricing is either at the order's rates, at rates derived from them, or agreed case by case — and if it is the third, agreed before the work or after it. Then the sharp part: does a verbal instruction count? If the order says variations must be in writing, then a site engineer telling you to do something is not an order, however senior he is, and you will discover that at final account.
Payment terms, and what triggers a bill. Not just the period. What event starts the clock — submission of the bill, certification of the bill, or receipt of some other document? A payment term that runs from certification with no time limit on certification is not a payment term.
Retention. How much is held, on what, and — the part usually left vague — what event releases it and when. Its mechanics are in retention money, and the clause to look for is the one naming the event, not the duration.
Advance. How much, against what security, and how it is recovered: proportionally from each bill, from a stated point, or in a lump. The recovery schedule changes your cash position on every bill, not just the first. Mobilisation advance covers what the money is really for.
When things go wrong#
Time. The completion date, and what counts as grounds for an extension. Delay caused by the employer, by another contractor on the same floor, by drawings that arrived late, by material that was to be supplied and was not. If the extension clause lists no grounds, every delay is yours.
Penalties. What is charged, on what base, and against what ceiling. A penalty with no ceiling is an unbounded liability on a fixed-value job.
Safety and statutory responsibilities. In outline: who is responsible for site safety, for workers' welfare and insurance, for registrations attached to the work, and for deductions the employer must make from your payments. Do not accept a clause that assigns you an obligation you have not read the current text of. Obligations in this area change, and you should verify the version in force with your own advisor rather than trust the order's summary of it.
Termination. On what grounds either side may end the contract, what notice is required, and — the clause people forget — how you are paid for work done and material brought to site at the point of termination.
The three lines usually missing#
Across most orders that later go wrong, the same three absences appear.
- The measurement basis. Named nowhere, and so decided by whoever holds the tape at bill time.
- Variation pricing. The order says variations shall be instructed in writing and says nothing about how they will be valued.
- What "completion" means. Physical completion, handover, or the end of a defects period. Retention release, penalty stop and final bill all hang off this word, and the three of them can hang off different dates if nobody defines it.
Ask for all three before signing. They are cheap to add on the day the order is drafted and impossible to add afterwards.
Orders that arrive late, and amendments#
Work often starts before the order arrives. That is normal in this trade and it is not, by itself, a disaster — but the order that eventually arrives will describe the job as somebody at head office understood it a month ago, not as it was actually instructed on site. Read it against what you have been doing, and raise the differences in writing before you sign, not at the first bill.
An amendment must be a document. A rate revised in a message, a scope extended in a meeting, a deadline moved on a call — none of these amends an order. Get an amendment sheet with a number, referencing the original order, signed by the same authority. And check that authority: an order signed by somebody without the power to sign it is a problem you will not discover until payment, when a person you have never met declines to approve a commitment their organisation did not make.
The short version#
The rate is the number everybody reads and the clauses around it decide the profit. Exclusions, wastage, what the rate includes, how quantity is measured, how a variation is priced, what releases retention, and what "completion" means.
Read those before you sign. Insist that amendments are documents, and check that whoever signed the order was entitled to.