The move, which could come within the next year, is part of an effort by SRM to further drive up quality on its projects while at the same time ensuring the financial stability of its most valued supply chain partners.
The company plans to measure subcontractors against its Build Sure management system, which it currently uses internally.
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The Build Sure system measures key metrics on projects and is supported by the five pillars of: safety, sustainability, quality, delivering on time, and profitability.
Explaining the plan, as SRM continued to mark its 150th year in business with a series of celebration days for employees and clients in London and later in Manchester, chief executive Paul Hamer told CM: “Most of the rationale I can see for retentions is that you hold money back so that you can bring people back to fix what they haven’t done properly. But if we are going to drive quality in construction then surely we should be empowering people who are going to do it right the first time. And if they do it right the first time, then why do we need retentions?
“What we are talking about now is measuring our entire supply chain through Build Sure metrics. We will have league tables to show how businesses are performing and in future we will award contracts based on that performance. What we would like to do is to move the people who are consistently performing into a different sphere where we remove retentions.”
Hamer added that the supply chain was crucial to SRM’s business and that having seen some high-profile business failures in the industry over the past 12 months, it wanted to try and reduce pressure on the supply chain where possible.
He said: “We are not there yet, but I think in the next 12 months, we will start to think about a new form of contracting and supply chain engagement so that we can facilitate getting cash into those businesses. Are we doing this because it is a good banner? No, we are doing it because it is critical to our delivery. It makes great sense for us.”
Last month, it emerged that SRM was one of the Build UK members to improve the speed at which it pays its suppliers, with the average time it takes to pay invoices speeding up to an average of 34 days.
