Subcontractor reliability: how to know who actually turns up

Every site manager has a mental list of the subbies who turn up and the ones who don't. The problem is it lives in your head, it's coloured by the last bad week, and it doesn't transfer when someone new does the booking. Subcontractor reliability should be a number you can see — built from what actually happened, not a gut feel.

Reputation built from the work face

SiteLive builds a company-wide track record for every subcontractor straight from the work you already do on the platform. No forms, no manual scoring, no commercial or contract data — just the truth from site:

• Confirm and decline rates — how often they lock in a booking versus leave you hanging.
• Response lead time — how fast they reply once you send the booking.
• Safety reputation — average safety ratings and any open flags raised against them.

A traffic light you can book against

All of it rolls up into a simple status: green for the crews who confirm fast and run clean, red for the ones who don't, and unrated when there isn't enough history yet to be fair. Before you commit a slot on next week's lookahead, you can see at a glance who you can count on.

Why this matters for the programme

A no-show isn't just an annoyance — it's the first domino. The pour slips, the follow-on trade stands idle, the crane booking is wasted, and the prelims keep burning. Booking the reliable crews is one of the cheapest ways to protect the programme, and it only works if reliability is visible at the moment you book.

Fair by design

Because the score comes from real activity and never from manual opinions, it's defensible. It's also private to your account — there's no public scoreboard shaming anyone — and it stays firmly on the build side, never touching commercial or claims data.

SiteLive scores every subbie's reliability and safety automatically, so you book the crews who show up and leave the no-shows behind. Start free for 7 days on your first site.