Sector expertise
Construction
& Building Contractors
We work with construction and building contractors to protect margins, improve cash flow and bring clarity to jobs, retentions and funding.
Why this sector
Winning work is one thing.
Getting paid is another.
The margin is set at tender.
Price the job from experience rather than real cost data and the profit is decided before anyone sets foot on site.
Cash and profit are not the same.
You can be busy, profitable on paper, and still be short of cash — because the money is sitting in applications, retentions and variations.
Retentions are your money, held elsewhere.
For many contractors the value of withheld retentions rivals annual net profit — and 44% report never recovering some of it.
Job-level truth is hard to see.
The overall P&L hides which contracts made money and which quietly ate it. Most contractors find out far too late.
We understand how contracting businesses actually run — and why profitable-looking firms still run out of cash.
How we help
Diagnostics built for contractors.
Five areas. One at a time. Each a fixed-price answer to a question you've been carrying.
Business Control
- Who owns a contract from tender to final account
- Site-to-office information flow and reporting
- Variation and change-control discipline
- Key-person dependency on estimating and QS
Financial Performance
- True cost and margin per contract
- Cash tied up in applications, WIP and retentions
- Payment terms in versus out across the chain
- Whether your contract numbers can be trusted
Growth Clarity
- Which contract types and clients are worth bidding
- Pricing and preliminaries against actual costs
- Tender win rate and where bids are lost
- Client concentration and pipeline reliability
Funding & Capital
- Readiness before approaching a lender
- How plant, vehicle and project finance is structured
- Real headroom across cash and facilities
- Whether the next contract is affordable to fund
Digital & AI Readiness
- Whether site, estimating and accounts systems connect
- Getting contract data out without rekeying
- Where automation saves admin hours
- A sequenced plan, not a shopping list
Impact in practice
The numbers behind the pressure.
Construction carries more financial risk than almost any UK sector. These are the realities we help contractors see clearly in their own business.
3,803
Construction insolvencies in a year
More construction firms became insolvent in the 12 months to May 2026 than in any other UK sector — 18% above pre-pandemic levels.
Reference: BCIS
44%
Never recover their retention
44% of contractors report retention money lost to upstream insolvency, averaging £79,900 per firm — with over half waiting more than 12 months for release.
Reference: BEIS-commissioned research
£11bn
The annual cost of late payment
Government figures put the cost of late and deferred payments to the UK economy at £11 billion a year, with 38 businesses closing daily as a direct result.
Reference: UK Government, 2026
Ready to protect margin and cash flow in your construction business?
Book a discovery call to see how we can help.