Construction Guides
Practical playbooks for commercial leaders, finance directors and procurement teams. Free to read, written by people who have run construction businesses.
Available Guides
The Margin Protection Playbook
The Margin Protection Playbook: Stop Giving Away Profit You Have Already Earned
A practical guide for Commercial Directors and QS teams at UK main contractors. Learn where margin leaks across the project lifecycle and the processes that stop it at source.
The Downstream Payment Control Playbook
The Downstream Payment Control Playbook: Own Every Step of the Assessment Process
A practical guide for commercial managers and QS teams responsible for subcontractor payment applications. Learn how to assess correctly, issue notices on time, and build the audit trail that protects you.
Getting Your Team to Actually Use New Software
Getting Your Team to Actually Use New Software
Most construction software implementations fail because teams won't use them. This guide gives you a practical, step-by-step framework for driving real adoption across site teams, office staff, and everyone in between.
The Commercial Control Playbook
The Commercial Control Playbook: Payments, Variations and Approvals Done Right
A practical guide for Commercial Directors, QS Directors and senior commercial teams at UK main contractors. Learn how to prevent margin leakage through better payment processes, variation management and approval workflows.
Construction Risks in 2026
Construction Risks in 2026: The Risks UK Contractors Can't Afford to Ignore
A practical guide for Managing Directors, Finance Directors and Commercial Leaders at UK main contractors and subcontractors. Understand the five critical risks facing construction businesses in 2026 and what to do about them.
The Assistant QS Field Guide
The Assistant QS Field Guide: Your First Few Years
Everything your degree didn't cover. A practical field guide for AQSs and graduate QSs covering the commercial cycle, payment deadlines, variations, CVR basics and the habits that define a strong commercial career.
The CVR Gap
The CVR Gap: Why Your Final Account Margin Is Always Worse Than Your CVR Said
A guide for Commercial Directors, Finance Directors and Senior QSs on the six CVR inputs that carry structural optimism, why the gap is predictable, and how to build a forecast that actually holds at final account.
The Variation Leak
The Variation Leak: How Much Margin UK Contractors Lose to Under-Claimed Variations
A guide for Commercial Directors, Senior QSs and Project Directors on the five failure modes that account for 1 to 3% of contract value in unrecovered variation entitlement, and how to close each one.
The Cashflow Exposure Report
The Cashflow Exposure Report: The Money Your Portfolio Has Earned But Not Yet Collected
A guide for Finance Directors, MDs and Commercial Directors on the five types of payment exposure hiding in a live project portfolio, and the one-page report that makes them visible before they become problems.
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