A month of work on a six hundred square metre site. Ten per cent of the money collected. And not one signature anywhere. That's how the story ends for the man who took the job after me — and the whole thing turned on a single friendly sentence that most people would never think twice about.
I took the job because the client was a friend of a friend. That should have been written into the contract, in bold, at the top of the first page: this man is a friend of a friend.
Six hundred square metres. An old house, the kind built when families were large and ceilings were high, being turned into a centre for children. What we agreed at the start was mechanical only — water, heating, gas, air conditioning.
Natural gas installation. Two boilers. Four bathrooms for the children and one for the adults. Ten rooms for study and play. A kitchen. A dining hall. A storeroom. Four offices.
Complicated work. I'd done enough of it to know exactly how it goes wrong, so I papered every corner. Service contract, itemised costings, invoices — all written so there was no gap anywhere for a client to slide a finger into and start pulling.
Not because I thought he was dishonest. After two decades you stop making that distinction. You paper it with everyone, including the people you like. Especially the people you like, because those are the ones you'll be too embarrassed to chase later.
Then the work started.
Two weeks in, he wants walls knocked through. Then partitions built. Then doors and windows fitted. Then ceramics, parquet, plasterboard.
None of that was mine. None of it was in anything we'd signed.
Which is fine. This happens on every site in the world. So I did what you do — drew up a new contract, new costings, new quotes for the extra work. Printed the lot. Took it to him.
He waved his hand.
"Leave it. We'll sort it out between us."
I have never walked off a site faster in my life.
I want to be careful here, because that sentence sounds like nothing. It sounds like warmth. It sounds like a man saying we're both adults, we trust each other, let's not bury a friendship under paperwork.
Here's the translation:
You do the work, and afterwards I'll decide whether to pay you.
That's the whole sentence. There's nothing else in it. The moment you accept it, you've handed the client the one thing that actually mattered — the decision about your own money. You do the work first. He decides second. And you hold nothing on paper that says otherwise.
I invoiced what I'd executed, collected what was in the signed contract, and left. He was surprised. He'd been friendly the entire time. I liked him. It had nothing to do with anything.
A colleague took over the job.
Before he started, I told him exactly what to do. Contracts. Itemised costings. Work stages signed off as they complete. A payment schedule tied to those stages. Cover yourself, because this client will ask for extras and he will wave his hand when you bring paper.
Nearly a month later, my phone rang.
"Bogdan, I've almost finished here. I've collected ten per cent of the money. I'm trying to get the rest, but he's avoiding me. What can I do?"
I asked him one question. Did you complete the contract, the costings, the work stages, the payment schedule?
"I did the contracts. But he never signed them. He'd gone on holiday, and then he was in a hurry to open."
Count what my colleague was holding at that moment. A month of work across six hundred square metres. Wages already paid out to his men. Materials already bought, from suppliers already invoicing him. Ten per cent collected.
And on the other side of the table: no signed contract, no signed costings, no signed stages. Nothing. Every bit of that work existed as an understanding between two men, one of whom had already got what he wanted.
He wasn't owed money in any way he could prove. He was hoping to be paid.
That's the part people outside this work never understand. As a human being, you accept it — he was on holiday, he was in a hurry, he seemed decent. It's reasonable. It's how normal people behave with each other.
As the man who owns the company, that same acceptance sinks you. Your workers don't wait because the client was on holiday. Your materials supplier doesn't wait because the client seemed decent. They get paid on time, out of your pocket, while you sit by the phone hoping a man who's dodging your calls develops a conscience.
The thing I do that most people won't
Here's where I part company with almost everyone in this trade.
I don't start work without an advance. Not a gesture, not a token — a real advance, before a single man of mine sets foot on the site.
Most contractors accept the opposite. They agree to be paid on terms. Thirty days. Sixty days. On completion. On the client's schedule, out of the client's mood, after the work is already sitting in the client's building where he can enjoy it whether or not he pays for it.
Think about what that arrangement actually is. You buy the materials. You pay the wages. You carry every cost of the job on your own back for weeks or months, and at the end you present a piece of paper and ask a man to voluntarily part with money for something he already has.
You've been his bank. You lent him the entire cost of the job, unsecured, at zero interest, and you called it winning a contract.
Signed paper covers you. Money already in your account covers you better.
Because here's what nobody tells you about the paperwork: even with everything signed, a client can still refuse to pay.
He can dispute the quality. He can claim the work wasn't what was agreed. He can simply go quiet and let the invoice age. The signatures don't move money by themselves — they only improve your position in an argument you now have to go and have.
And if he holds firm, your options narrow to one. You sue him.
Which means lawyers. Court fees. Expert reports. Hearings that get postponed because someone's ill. Months, and often years. All of it paid for by you, while the men you employed on his site have long since been paid by you, and the supplier who delivered his materials has long since been paid by you.
I've watched contractors win those cases and go under anyway. The judgment arrives, it says they were right the whole time, and by then there's no company left to receive the money. Being right on paper and being solvent are two completely different conditions, and only one of them keeps your doors open.
An advance changes the arithmetic before any of that can happen. It means the client has committed something before you commit anything. It means the first money in the job is his, not yours. And it filters people with startling efficiency — the ones who intend to pay you will discuss the size of the advance, and the ones who never intended to will suddenly discover a problem with the principle of it.
That's free information, given to you before you've spent a penny. Take it seriously.
So: the paperwork isn't there because you distrust the client. It's there because you have people to pay on Friday whether or not he answers his phone. And the advance isn't there because you're difficult to work with. It's there because the alternative is financing a stranger's building out of your own pocket and calling it a business.
Get it signed before you start. Get some of it paid before you start. And when a man waves his hand at your paperwork and tells you not to worry — that's not the moment to relax. That's the moment to count what you're carrying.