The Question I Ask Every Subcontractor, Every Week
Updated: Sep 29
Plumbers are told they're Neanderthals, and they'll tell you the same about themselves. “Me, monkey Neanderthal. Sophisticated person” — that's the joke, delivered completely deadpan, most weeks.
They were the hardest crew I ever had to bring on board. They're now the best.
What turned it wasn't a policy document. It was one question, asked every single week.
“But you know I've got a licence.”
“I do. But if you haven't got it on you today, and the building commission or SafeWork walks in — who gets fined? You, or your employer?”
Why I ask anyway
Having held a licence once isn't the same as holding a current one. Licences lapse. Inductions expire. Insurance certificates run out without anyone noticing until the day it matters.
A weekly check isn't distrust. It's the only version of the question that actually catches the gap before a regulator does.
Who actually wears the fine
If SafeWork or council walks onto a site and finds a subcontractor without a current licence, an expired induction, or no insurance on file, the person answering for it usually isn't the sub.
It's whoever is managing that site.
As a principal contractor, you carry duties for who you let onto a site, not just what your own crew does. That doesn't change because the sub swore black and blue they were covered.
If that's exposure you're currently carrying and not sure of, book a call and we'll go through what's actually on file for your crews right now.
What “compliant” actually covers
A licence on file from twelve months ago tells you nothing about today. What we check, every week, for every trade on site:
Current trade licence, sighted, not just claimed
White card or site induction, current and specific to that site
Public liability and workers compensation insurance certificates, in date
A safe work method statement where the task calls for one
The right PPE, worn, not just owned
The Neanderthals
The crew that gave themselves that name were the hardest to bring around. Every rule got pushback. Every check felt, to them, like an accusation.
What changed it wasn't enforcing harder. It was telling them why — every time, even when the reason looked obvious from where I was standing and not from where they were.
The loudest resistor, once they're actually on side, becomes the loudest advocate. They're the ones telling the next new starter why the check happens, in language that lands better than anything I could write in a policy.
They are beautiful Neanderthals, though.
What this looks like day to day
Not a folder checked once at onboarding and never opened again. A register, checked on a cadence, with one person owning it. Small enough that it takes ten minutes. Consistent enough that nobody's caught out by a walk-in visit.
If you don't have a system for this today
List every subcontractor and trade currently on your sites — not just the ones you remember.
Check licence, induction and insurance currency for each one, this week, not from memory.
Put it into a register that gets checked on a set cadence — not once, ever, and then forgotten.
If you're managing subcontractors and you're not certain what's actually current on file for each one, that's worth a conversation before someone else finds the gap for you.
Book a call back and we'll go through it.
Servicing Wollondilly, Macarthur, the Southern Highlands, Goulburn and the Illawarra to Nowra.
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