Chapter 19 Quiz — Subcontractor Management

B. $32,800,000 ÷ $40,000,000 = 82 percent. The chapter gives 80–90 percent as the typical range for commercial building work, with the honest caveat that it varies widely by market, project type, and how much the general contractor self-performs.

C. The chapter ranks the four sources in order: (1) make their work easy and profitable, (2) pay correctly and on time, (3) the schedule and coordination process, (4) the enforcement clauses. Number one is first because it is immediate, compounding, and almost entirely within your control — and because it directly changes the subcontractor's own economics on your job.

B. Enforcement is slow, expensive, and it does not put a worker on your floor tomorrow. When a troubled job's file is thick with cure notices, the chapter's advice is to go look at the RFI log, the released-area log, and the payment history first — the general contractor's own fingerprints are on the cause about two-thirds of the time.

B. Progress this month was purchased by hours worked last month. A shortfall is visible in the daily report weeks before it appears in the percent-complete column — which is precisely the window in which correction is still cheap. The second mechanism matters too: manpower is self-reported in advance, so a firm that commits to a curve and does not staff to it has revealed a commitment problem, not just a schedule problem.

C. 75–84 percent is orange: a written notice of the schedule requirement with a recovery plan requested, including dates. Note that "terminate for cause" is not even the red action — red is a formal notice per the subcontract plus evaluation of supplementation. Termination sits at rung 6, after a cure period has run.

C. The cure notice and the opportunity to cure are almost always conditions precedent to the supplementation remedy. Without them your deduction is a naked withholding that the subcontractor can dispute and will probably win — and they may have a claim against you for interfering with their work. (D is also damaging and will cost you money, but C is usually fatal.)

D. The controlling employer — the one with general supervisory authority over the site, including the authority to correct hazards or require others to correct them. The standard applied is reasonable care, generally understood as less than what is required of the employer whose own people are exposed, but decidedly not zero: periodic inspections appropriate to the hazards, an effective correction system, and actual enforcement. An employer can occupy more than one role at once.

C. The five channels are physical interference, waiting and restarting, dilution of supervision, extra material handling, and rework and damage. Wage rates do not change because a space is crowded; the hours required to do the same work go up. (Premium time for acceleration is a separate cost, and a separate line.)

B. The measured mile compares the same crew doing the same kind of work with and without the impact, on this job, from the records. Its weakness is comparability — different wall heights, a different crew, a different position on the learning curve, or different weather will contaminate it, and a competent opposing consultant will say so quickly. It is a good method used carefully, not a magic one.

C. The float earned is small and certain; the cost is large and diffuse — a point or two added to future bids, and the risk that a foreman moves his crew to a general contractor who pays on time. The chapter's illustration puts a 15-working-day interior progress loss at roughly 21 calendar days, or about $223,650 at $10,650 per calendar day. (Slow payment may also run afoul of prompt-payment statutes, which vary by jurisdiction — but the business case alone is decisive.)

B. Reading the dependency, not just the variance, is the whole skill. Sightline's framing crew was running at 101 percent of plan in the same period, which is strong evidence the company is willing and able to staff the job — they simply had nowhere to put the board crew. A letter to Sightline would have been answered with a letter that made Kestrel look like it did not understand its own schedule.

B. A punch list is evidence the first two quality mechanisms — mockups and benchmark installations, and first-work inspections — did not do their job. It is a bill for the inspections nobody performed in month eleven, and it arrives at the most expensive possible moment.

False. A performance bond is a money instrument, not a schedule instrument. In Case Study 2 the bond substantially covered the excess cost of completion, and the school still opened 38 days late — costing $91,200 in liquidated damages and $117,800 in extended general conditions that the bond did not touch. Expect 30–60 days from default declaration to productive replacement work, plus a relearning curve.

False. They come to you — because you hold their contract, you wrote the schedule, and you have the money. Whether you can push that cost down to the responsible trade depends on your claims-against-other-subcontractors provision and on whether your daily reports and handoff log identify which trade caused what.

False. The manpower decision is usually made above the project manager's level, so the manpower conversation belongs there too. What makes it aggressive or not is the execution: tell their project manager you are making the call before you make it, lead with facts rather than accusations, state that you have done your own job first, and bring an offer.

False. The obligation is generally read as a duty to coordinate reasonably and in good faith and to provide reasonable access — not a warranty against all interference. But a general contractor who actively interferes, fails to sequence at all, or repeatedly releases and un-releases areas is in materially different territory than one who ran a disciplined process and still had a bad month. The specific language and its interpretation vary by contract form and jurisdiction.

False. That is constructive acceleration. The recovery obligation applies to delays the subcontractor caused. If the delay is yours or the owner's and you want it recovered faster, that is a change and it costs money. The test is a single question asked before you direct anything: who caused the delay I am asking them to absorb?

False. Enforceability is highly jurisdiction-dependent, and courts in a number of states recognize exceptions — commonly for active interference, bad faith, delays not contemplated by the parties, or abandonment. Treating such a clause as a force field is how general contractors eventually meet a judge who disagrees. Read your clause and your state's law, and ask counsel before you rely on it.

You do not manage the work; you manage the people who contracted to do the work. Your leverage is the subcontract, the schedule, and the coordination — not authority, because a subcontractor's crews answer to their own company's economics and not to your instructions. A general contractor who tries to command instead of enabling and holding accountable will fail at both.

Concrete behavior change: faced with a short-handed trade, a manager who has crossed the threshold first audits their own performance — released areas, open RFIs, payment history — and looks for a way to make the work easier or more profitable, before writing anything. A manager who has not crossed it sends an email with the schedule attached and the words "per the subcontract" in it, and is surprised when nothing happens.

(1) Field conversation with the foreman. (2) Conversation with their project manager and, where warranted, the firm's owner, confirmed by email. (3) Written notice of the schedule requirement plus a demand for a recovery plan. (4) Recovery plan accepted or rejected in writing, with dates. (5) Formal cure notice per the subcontract, copying the surety if bonded. (6) Supplementation, backcharge, or termination for cause.

Skipping to supplementation forfeits the remedy itself. The supplementation and backcharge rights in nearly every subcontract are conditioned on written notice and a genuine opportunity to cure; without them, your deduction is a withholding you cannot substantiate, the subcontractor may have a claim against you for interference, and you have handed them a grievance they will use to color every other disputed item for the rest of the job.

It lives nowhere identifiable — buried in the labor productivity factor, the general-conditions line, the contingency, or the fee. You cannot negotiate it out at buyout because it was baked in before the number was written; the only way to remove it is to have earned a different reputation over years of behavior. Three percent of Cardinal Mechanical's $6,400,000 Northgate subcontract is $192,000 on one trade on one job, which is the return on releasing areas cleanly, answering RFIs promptly, paying inside terms, deciding quickly, and running a real coordination meeting — none of which appears on any cost report, and all of which appears in the bids you receive.

Do not send the cure notice. It would be answered with a letter listing your late releases, your open RFIs, and your late payments, and it would convert a recoverable schedule problem into a claim that runs against you.

Days 1–2 — fix your own side, in writing. Close the three overdue RFIs or issue interim directions so their detailing can proceed. Get the two late applications paid and instruct accounting in writing that this subcontractor's applications are processed on a fixed date, no exceptions. Publish a released-area log showing exactly what is available now and what is coming, by date, and hold those dates.

Day 2 — the field conversation (rung 1). Superintendent walks the areas with their general foreman. Ask what they need. Note it in the daily report.

Day 3 — the phone call (rung 2). You call their project manager. Tell him what you have fixed, ask what else blocks him, and ask what it would take to get to the committed curve. Confirm the conversation by email the same day — facts, commitments, dates. This is your contemporaneous record.

Days 4–5 — escalate to the firm's owner, having told their PM first. Same structure: fact, your own performance stated affirmatively, consequence as information, a question, and an offer (accelerated payment terms; two additional clean released zones).

Days 5–10 — measure. Roll up crew counts daily. Update the manpower table. Compute the projected completion at the observed rate and check it against the CPM total float so you know whether this actually reaches substantial completion.

In parallel, day 1 — protect quietly. Check the waiver matrix for preliminary notices from their tier. Check whether the subcontract is bonded and locate the bond. Do not send anything to the surety yet; there is no default and the cause is at least partly yours.

If the curve has not moved by day 10: rung 3 — a written notice of the schedule requirement with a recovery plan due in five business days, stating your now-corrected performance with references, and quantifying the projected slip in weeks and dollars.