How to Find & Vet Subcontractors

Here's the truth that decides whether this business is freedom or misery: your subcontractors are your product. You can be brilliant at sales and pricing, but if the trade does poor work or doesn't show up, it's your name on the contract and your reputation on the floor. Finding and vetting trades well is the highest-leverage skill in the entire model.

Where to find them#

Ranked by quality of what you'll typically get:

• Referrals from other trades. Good tradespeople know other good tradespeople. Ask every trade you work with who they'd recommend for the disciplines you don't yet cover. This is the gold source.
• Referrals from clients and your network. "Who did your extension? Were they any good?" Warm, proven, often available.
• Builders' merchant counters. The trades buying materials at 7am are working trades. A relationship with the counter staff at a local merchant can introduce you to busy, reliable crews.
• Trade job boards and apps. Plenty of platforms list subcontractors looking for work. Useful for volume, but you must vet hard - anyone can list.
• Local trade Facebook groups. Fast and free, same caveat: vet everyone.

Avoid building a business on cold directory leads alone. Anyone can pay to be listed; not everyone can be vouched for.

The vetting checklist#

Before you trust a trade with a real client's job, run every one of these. Skipping any is how cowboys get onto your sites:

1. Insurance. They must carry their own liability cover (and employer's liability if they have staff). Ask for the certificate. No cover, no work - their accident becomes your lawsuit otherwise.
2. Certifications for regulated work. Gas and electrical work must be done by someone licensed or registered for your country (Gas Safe for gas in the UK; a state or provincial trade licence in the US and Canada; national equivalents elsewhere). Verify the licence or registration number, don't take their word.
3. Proof of recent work. Photos of jobs they've actually done, and ideally a past client you can call. A real trade has a phone full of finished work.
4. Day rate and pricing, in writing. Agree what they charge before you ever quote a client. A text confirming the rate is enough - vagueness here destroys your margin.
5. Availability and reliability signals. Do they answer the phone? Reply when they say? Turn up to the first meeting on time? How someone behaves before you've paid them is the best preview of how they'll behave after.
6. A small trial first. Never bet a $40k job on an untested trade. Give a new sub a small, low-stakes job and watch everything - quality, timekeeping, communication, cleanliness. Promote the ones who pass.

Cowboys reveal themselves on the small jobs. Test cheap, then trust expensive.

Build a bench, not a dependency#

The most expensive mistake in this business is depending on a single trade per discipline. The day your only plumber is sick, double-booked, or simply ghosts you, your job stops dead - and the client doesn't care whose fault it is. They blame the company on the contract. You.

So build a bench: at least two vetted, reliable trades for each core discipline (plumbing, electrics, general building, tiling, plastering, decorating). Keep them warm with steady work even when you don't strictly need both. Redundancy isn't waste - it's the insurance policy that lets you promise clients certainty and actually deliver it.

Treat your trades like the asset they are#

Good trades have options. If you're a hassle to work with - slow to pay, vague on scope, chaotic on scheduling - the best ones quietly stop answering and you're left with whoever's available. Become the operator the best trades want to work for:

• Pay on time, every time. This alone puts you ahead of most of the cowboys who hire trades. It buys loyalty and first dibs on their diary.
• Give clear scope and clean sites. Respect their time; don't make them figure out the job on arrival.
• Bring them steady, predictable work. A reliable pipeline of jobs is worth a premium to a tradesperson, and it earns you their best rate and their best behaviour.

Look after your bench and your hardest operational problem - delivery - quietly solves itself. Now learn to run them when you're not there: Managing Subcontractors You've Never Met.