How to manage subcontractors on site: a foreman's playbook

Managing subcontractors is the part of the job that never shows up in the contract but decides whether the programme holds. You are coordinating a dozen companies who do not work for you, do not share a calendar, and only find out about each other when they clash on site.

Here is the playbook that keeps it under control.

1. Confirm before you commit

The 6am phone round exists because nobody knows who is actually turning up. Replace it with a confirmation step: every booking goes to the subcontractor, and they confirm or decline before the day. If three of your five trades have not confirmed by Thursday, you find out Thursday — not at 6am on the day.

This one change removes the biggest source of wasted standing time on a site.

2. Coordinate trades against zones

Two trades in the same zone is the most common avoidable clash on any build. The fix is to plan by zone as well as by day, and let the system flag the overlap before it happens. A plasterer and an electrician booked into the same room on the same morning is a problem you want to see on a screen, not on site.

3. Sequence the work that depends on other work

Most subcontractor delays are not the subbie's fault — they turned up and the work in front of them was not ready. Make-ready means checking the constraints before the booking: is the area clear, the materials on site, the prior trade finished? A booking that is not ready to start is a booking that should move.

4. Track who actually turns up

Over a job, patterns emerge: the trades who confirm early and turn up, and the ones who go quiet and no-show. Capturing that — confirm rates, response times, no-shows — turns gut feel into a record you can act on when you plan the next phase, or the next project.

5. Keep the subbies in the loop for free

The reason most coordination tools fail is that subcontractors will not pay a per-seat fee to confirm a booking on someone else's job. If they cannot get in for free, they stay on WhatsApp, and your single source of truth is back to a group chat. Free access for invited subcontractors is not a nice-to-have — it is the thing that makes the whole system work.

Bringing it together

Good subcontractor management is not about chasing people harder. It is about giving everyone the same live picture: who is booked, who has confirmed, what is ready, and what clashes. When the supply chain can see the plan, the plan holds — and the disputes that start with "you never told me" never start.

SiteLive does exactly this: live bookings with confirmations, clash detection, make-ready checks, reliability tracking, and free access for the subcontractors you invite. See how it works or start a free trial.