Questions asked before an award

Three to five working days for a defined scope on a site list we have the data for. Longer where the existing condition is uncertain and somebody has to go and look first, which on older structures is more common than people expect. If a structural analysis is needed, that is two to four weeks on its own and it is the thing most likely to move your programme — we will tell you on the first call rather than three weeks in.

Because a day rate on its own is genuinely misleading and the fix is publishing what is inside it, not hiding it. Two contractors can quote the same crew day and mean different things: one includes the truck, rigging, test gear and reporting, the other bills consumables, equipment hire, travel time and close-out separately and arrives thirty per cent higher at invoice. The rates page lists what is in and what is out, line by line.

Yes, but be aware of the economics. On a one-day scope at a site four hours away, mobilisation is frequently larger than the labour. If the site is a long way from anything else we are doing, a local contractor will usually be cheaper and we will say so. Where we are genuinely the better answer is a routed site list, or a site that needs steel, HVAC and power looked at together.

Yes. Where an MSA exists it governs over anything published here, and the proposal is written against its terms. Send it at scoping stage rather than at award: MSAs frequently carry insurance requirements, close-out formats and billing rules that change how a proposal is built.

It depends on the scope, and the format depends on your QA process. Broadly: photographs taken against what they document, test results in your submission format, red-lines for anything built differently from the issued drawings and why, a punch list with its closure, and sign-off. For a modification it also carries torque records and material certifications. The close-out page sets it out properly.

Yes, and we agree it at proposal stage rather than discovering it at submission. Photo naming conventions, mapping sheets, test file formats and portals all vary, and getting them wrong is rework rather than a technical failure. Where a deliverable is rejected for format rather than substance, we resubmit it corrected at no charge — that is our problem to fix.

When the close-out package is accepted, not when the crew drives away. That is deliberate. Invoicing at demobilisation makes the package quietly optional, which is how a portfolio ends up with two hundred completed jobs and no evidence for any of them.

Mobilisation on mobilisation, because it is spent whether or not a bolt is turned. Field work progressively against completed sites or stages, supported by daily reports. The close-out package as the final milestone. Terms, retainage and lien-waiver requirements are agreed in the contract. It is all on the payment and cancellation page.

Because the honest options are somebody else’s work, a stock image of a tower, or client sites we were not given permission to publish. Field photography taken on a client’s structures belongs to that project and is treated as confidential, which is stated in the privacy policy. The drawing on the homepage is a schematic we made, and it is labelled as one.

Because a number printed on a marketing page is not evidence: you cannot verify it, and the industry is full of pages that print them anyway. Certificates of insurance naming your project, the current safety programme, climber certification records and references are sent on request to a named person who can actually check them.

Because there is not one to publish yet. Rather than print an address that bounces or a form that delivers nowhere, the site publishes the telephone number, which is answered. When an address exists it will appear here and the form will come with it.

Not at present. It sets no cookies of its own, loads nothing from a content delivery network, and in its current configuration makes no external network requests at all. It is built to load one Microsoft Advertising tag while we run paid search, and the cookie policy is generated from the same setting that switches that tag on, so it cannot drift out of date.