Every once in a while, we get a ‘trend’ – something that just keeps recurring again and again.

Currently it’s price – with every job we look at…lacking the funds to do the work required.

We have a pretty accurate pricing structure at JKSL, we know what every element of a project will cost and we know what money we need to charge to do the work, and make a profit. It appears however that most of the bigger main contractors don’t have this ability.

They say things like… ‘we’ve gone in sharp’ or ‘we’ve been battered on price’…. what this actually means is – they haven’t got enough money in a project to actually do the work. They then rely on screwing every subbie on the job so that they can complete the project.

We put a price in of say £42,500.00 but the main contractor says we’ve only got £30,000.00 in the budget.

Now whichever way you sharpen your pencil this means one of two options;

1. You make no money whatsoever
2. You don’t do the job properly

In a world where everything is run by the Health and Safety book why is it we are constantly being asked to cut margins and inevitably cut corners? We are all encouraged to have every new regulatory acronym – and every new piece of PPE – which all costs money ….and which I fully support.

But how can we also be expected to be doing projects at lower and lower prices?

I’ve always lived by the premise… ‘you get what you pay for’ ..

It’s impossible to ask for higher and higher training standards, more and more paperwork and better guaranties – and expect this for less money.

Perhaps it’s down to people not understanding what it is we do when removing Japanese knotweed?

To be clear – what we do when removing Japanese knotweed is to …remove… the Japanese knotweed.

One way of doing this for less money is to remove less Japanese knotweed…

We know what the cheapest landfill costs are, we know what screening costs are, and we know what burial costs are. Nobody is getting you a cheaper cost by knowing more than we know at JKSL  – sorry we’ve been doing this a long time and we know everything there is to know ….

So – Mr Client – how do you want this played out?

Do you want us to work for nothing – or do you want us to take less than the requisite amount of Japanese knotweed off site.

Well I’m afraid that JKSL won’t do either of these options.

We do it properly, we make a profit margin – then we go home.

Or we don’t get out of bed at all.

Mike C