Something comes and smacks you in the face as if to say "don't be so STUPID, girl!"
It's like taking two steps forwad, and then being pushed back one step.
My move to commercial work only has been good, on the whole. We picked up a factory relatively straight away, and then we picked up a commercial building on the fringe of the CBD which we're just starting now, and we've also picked up a juicy industrial subdivision complex with civil works as well. So we've got a nice pipeline till the end of next year we think.
Anyway....here's the thing...when you do a job you actually want to be paid, don't you? I certainly do. I'm not here to pay for the assets owned by someone else.
I'm pretty sure I've mentioned this factory job once or twice before. It's a rebuild after a fire. The fire happened in late 2013 and after the clients stuffed around with insurance assessors and goodness knows what else, we were contracted at the end of October 2014.
How we got the job was that we were friends of the owners. Our boys all go to the same school, and play in the same school sport teams and club sports teams. We've become family friends. Family friends means that our family and their family would get together regularly. We went away on holidays together. We all got along very well. The men had common sport threads. The wife and I just got along because we had very similar thoughts and values (or so I thought). So when it came time to find a builder they asked us if we wanted to tender.
Naturally we tendered, but it was made very clear to us that the insurance assessors would be running the tender and the client's have no say in the eventual appointed builder. I wouldn't expect it to be any other way. Needless to say, it was a very competative tender situation, but we won out in the end, and works commenced late October /early November, 2014.
With the exception of a 40-odd day delay due to something needing to be redesigned, things progressed very smoothly throughout the job. We sent the invoice to the client and the insurance assessor, and 7 or so days later, it was paid in full directly into my bank account. The job flowed nicely.
As the end of the job approached, on 02nd August to be exact, we had a family dinner combined business meeting with the client, and he looked at me fair and square in the eyes and said your money is safe.
YOUR MONEY IS SAFE.
Thank god I keep notes of meetings!
I submit my final progress claim and I hear nothing. A week goes by, nothing. Ten days goes by, no one is answering my emails. I start to wonder....
Finally I receive a phone call and a meeting is scheduled for 07th September. At this meeting I'm advised that the insurance company has closed their file and they have no money to fund the final progress claim (which was $436,000 in total). The client says that they've engaged a new accountant to go over their books as they're leaking money and they'll need to enter into a payment arrangement with us. They said they didn't know they were at their limits of their sums insured. How someone doesn't know this is beyond me. I send a progress claim each month that tells them what the adjusted contract sum is, how much they've paid and what's remaining as their cost to complete. They receive a report after each payment is made by the insurance assessor telling them what their sum insured is, how much has been paid out and the balance left. So how they can say they didn't know is beyond me! It's fraud - plain and simple.
Then, to add salt to the wound, they sold their home in the southern suburbs of Sydney for $2.1m. And they bought a new home in Inner West for $2.2m. They need a 10% deposit for that. Plus money for stampt duty as well.
We left the meeting with him saying that he'll submit a payment arrangement to us in writing within a few days. I immediately followed up with an email saying that we expect a payment of at least $230k to allow for payment to flow to the major subcontractors who are waiting to be paid, and the remaining $200k we can consider a slower arrangement to help them out.
That was on 07th September.
Today is 19th October and I still haven't received that payment arrangement in writing.
What I did receive was a telephone call saying his accountant will only authorise $10,000 per month.
All of a sudden I've put a shingle that says "BANK" on my front door? I don't fucking think so.
I told him no, and we ended up screaming at each other. I immediatley sent another email reiterating our previous position that we're willing to agree to $230k now with a slower arrangement for the remainder.
Haven't heard from them since.
But in the meantime their son tells my son "we've moved around the corner, but don't tell your parents". When my asked why their son said "i don't know but my parents said not to tell you".
Sadly, I've had to commence legal recovery action, and it hurts. It's making me very upset and I'm going down this path kicking and screaming, yet resolute to recover my funds. I had a relationship with these people. They were friends. The abuse of trust is crushing and heartbreaking.
Last week we filed our Statement of Claim in the courts against his company (my contract is with his company, and he has signed a personal guarantee). It's been stamped and returned, and today he was served. We're also filing a motion for Summary Judgement given the matter falls within the Securities of Payment Act and he hasn't provided us with a payment arrangement, so he's prohibited from lodging any form of defence against our action therefore we don't need to wait the 28 days for his defence before being awarded judgement.
Once we receive all those then we can apply to garnish his bank accounts and then proceed to wind up his company and force the disposal of the company owned assets - which according to them should fetch about $4.5m on the open market - but they do have debt over them.
And failing that, we need to also go after him personally under the personal guarantee. He'll have nothing because once the company is folded then he has no source of income therefore no means of meeting his mortgage obligations on the house he bought in the Inner West.
Sadly, I think he may be well and truly fucked....
But in the meantime, so am I. I have a job in the CBD that I need to fund and I have subcontractors that I need to pay who worked on the factory job. I can't do both. All my money is sitting in that job.
Despite all the law I have on my side I have little chance of recovering my funds. Once the banks get wind of what's going on they'll foreclose and sell for a song....they only care about themselves, no one else.
This industry MUST CHANGE. The builders can not continue to take financial risk on other people's assets - it just doesn't make sense. Sadly, no one has the balls to do anything about it - not industry, not government. And what can I do...I'm just one lonely female voice.
Till next time....
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