Scope, in writing
What’s included and what isn’t. Half of all disputes with a vendor are about this, and almost all of them can be avoided by defining it in the contract and reflecting it in the system.
Guide
Working with subcontractors is easy. Depending on them is expensive
The difference between the two comes down to an administrative detail almost nobody checks when signing: where the record of what they did ends up living.
Why you subcontract, and what you’re actually buying
You subcontract by specialty — elevators, fire protection, industrial refrigeration — by geographic coverage, or for workload spikes that don’t justify hiring in-house. In all three cases what you’re buying is execution capacity, not accountability: in front of an inspection, a customer, or an incident, whoever answers is still the facility owner or whoever holds the maintenance contract. That asymmetry is what turns subcontractor management into an information problem, not just a procurement one.
What needs to be kept under control
Five things that get taken for granted and are rarely written down.
Committed deadlines
Response time by priority, tracked in the system and not just in the contract, so it can be reviewed without redoing the math.
Their current documentation
Insurance, credentials and activity-coordination paperwork, with expiry dates and alerts. It’s the first thing an inspection asks for, and the last thing anyone checks.
What was done, with proof
What they did, when, and with what result, in your format, not theirs.
Their performance, measured
Deadlines met, reopened jobs, and cost. Without data, renewal gets decided by the personal relationship with the sales rep.
The dependency that builds up without anyone noticing
It happens slowly, and almost always the same way. At first the vendor sends their report as a PDF and someone files it. A year in, finding out what’s been done on a unit means asking them for it. Three years in, switching vendors means starting from scratch: nobody knows what was inspected, what caused problems, or where the certificates are. At that point the relationship has stopped being commercial and become one of dependency, and it shows up at the next price negotiation. The fix isn’t distrusting the vendor: it’s having the record of what they do on your premises live in your system from day one.
Making it possible to switch vendors
A healthy maintenance network is one where you can switch a vendor without drama, and that requires three things prepared well before you need them. That your asset inventory is yours and kept up to date. That the history of visits lives in your system, with enough depth for the incoming vendor to know what’s there. And that the documentation — certificates, reports, manuals — is attached to the facility, not sitting in the outgoing vendor’s folder. With those three in place, switching contractors is just a vendor change. Without them, it’s an amnesty on your own history.
Shall we look at it with your way of working?
Leave your details and we will get in touch to see whether we fit. No commitment, no lock-in period.
How to get a contractor to actually adopt it
The hard part of bringing subcontractors into a system isn’t technical, it’s relational. An outside company has its own processes, its own tools, and no natural obligation to learn yours, so any friction you add just means they’ll keep sending the PDF report by email. What works is keeping what you ask of them to a minimum: report what was done and little else, without forcing them to navigate a system that isn’t theirs. For the ones who work with you every week, giving them their own login pays off, because they end up seeing their own workload and history, and that’s useful to them too. For one-off jobs, a restricted link tied to that specific job avoids the whole conversation. And there’s one argument that tends to unstick the negotiation: a contractor who logs work inside the system leaves a record of what they did — which is exactly what they need the day someone disputes an invoice.
Comparing contractors on the same terms
When several companies work on your facilities and each one reports its own way, comparing them is impossible, and renewal decisions end up being made on price and personal rapport. That’s not a bad criterion, but it’s an incomplete one. If everyone logs in the same place, comparisons appear that didn’t exist before: how long each one takes from report to first visit, what proportion of jobs they resolve without a return trip, how many get reopened for the same reason on the same unit. None of those numbers show up on an invoice. And you don’t need to use them to punish anyone — usually just showing them to the contractor is enough, because most of the time they didn’t know either.
Frequently asked questions
What do I do about a contractor who refuses to use the system?
First, understand why, because the reason is usually specific and sometimes reasonable: they don’t have anyone in an office, they work in places without signal, or they fear the record could be used against them in an invoice dispute. Each of those three has a different fix. If there’s still no way forward, the alternative is having someone on your side log whatever they send back; it’s worse, but far better than leaving that work out of the asset’s history entirely.
Do I have to pay for a license for every subcontractor?
No, and that would be a perverse incentive: charging per outside company would push you to leave out of the system exactly the ones that give you the least work — which are the ones with the worst visibility. Beyond a dedicated login, there’s also the restricted link tied to a specific job, which fits the occasional vendor who’ll never register.
How do I keep track of what a subcontractor does?
By having them log what was done inside your system, through their portal or through a one-off link. From there you can measure deadlines, reopenings and cost, which is what turns renewal into a data-driven decision.
What documentation should I have on file for each vendor?
Insurance, credentials and activity-coordination paperwork, with expiry dates and alerts before they lapse. It’s the first thing an inspection asks for.
What happens if I switch maintenance contractors?
It depends on where the record lived. If it lived in their system, you start from scratch. If it lived in yours, it’s just a vendor change, and the incoming company starts out already knowing what’s there.
What if the vendor doesn’t want to use my system?
There are three levels: a dedicated login, a public link with no registration, or having them keep sending their report by email so it gets read automatically and proposed as a work order. The outcome is the same either way: the record ends up in your history.
Could you switch vendors tomorrow?
In the demo we’ll look at what you’d have to ask them for today to make that happen, and what it would take not to have to ask at all.