How Terms And Conditions Protect Your Cabling Project

We break down how terms and conditions protect budgets, timelines, and teams on low voltage projects and why the scope of work is not enough. Real clauses, field stories, and simple rules help you stop scope creep, avoid payment traps, and document your way to fewer disputes.

• difference between scope and terms and conditions 
• essential assumptions like 150‑foot averages and clear interstitial space 
• continuity testing vs certification and reporting 
• paper trails, mediation, and jurisdiction choices 
• payment terms, retainage, and avoiding pay‑when‑paid 
• change orders, authorized signers, and overtime impacts 
• delays from weather, site access, and GC coordination 
• liquidated damages, warranty coverage, and exclusions 
• why foremen and techs must carry five key documents 
• reading contracts three times to catch risk early

Wednesday nights, 6 p.m. Eastern, join the live stream to ask your favorite RCDD questions; please subscribe on YouTube, hit the bell, and leave a five‑star rating; grab the 100 boilerplate T&C template via the link in the YouTube description; buy me a coffee or book a 15‑minute call

Chapters

• 0:00 Why Terms And Conditions Matter
• 1:03 Community, Ratings, And Livestreams
• 2:18 What T&Cs Are And Why They’re The Rulebook
• 4:37 Scope Of Work Versus Terms And Conditions
• 7:20 Boilerplate, Negotiation, And Assumptions
• 10:24 Sponsor Break: Advertise On The Show
• 11:04 Two Essential Assumptions Every Estimator Uses
• 14:24 Certification Vs Testing And Documentation
• 16:09 Sponsor Break: Fiber Training Shoutout
• 16:54 Paper Trails, Jurisdiction, And Disputes
• 18:17 Payment Terms, Retainage, And Pay‑When‑Paid
• 21:20 Change Orders, Authority, And Overtime
• 24:16 Delays, Site Access, And GC Coordination
• 27:20 Liquidated Damages And Warranty Boundaries
• 30:08 Protecting Field Teams With Clear Rules
• 33:22 Read Everything: Five Documents To Carry
• 36:05 Interstitial Space And Other Gotchas
• 38:01 Final Reminders And Resource Download

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Hey WildMonkeys, welcome to another episode of Let's Talk Cabling. Have you ever had a client refuse to pay for extra work because it wasn't in the scope of work? Or have you ever gotten blamed for a delay that wasn't your fault? Nine times out of ten, that answer was buried in the terms and conditions, and you scrolled right past it. Today we're diving in to terms and conditions. Welcome to the show where we tackle the tough questions submitted by installers, estimators, project managers, technicians, customers, even IT personnel. We're connecting at the human level so that we can connect the world. If you're watching this show on YouTube, would you mind hitting the subscribe button and the bell button to be notified when new content is being produced? If you're listening to us on one of the audio podcast platforms, would you mind leaving us a five-star rating? Those simple little steps help us take on the algorithm so we can educate, encourage, and enrich the lives of people in the ICT industry. Wednesday nights, 6 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, what are you doing? You know I do a live stream on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, everywhere I can figure out to put the live stream where you get to ask your favorite RCDD, and you know that's me, questions on installation, design, certification, project management, estimation. I even do career path questions. But I can hear you check and drive my truck at 6 p.m. on Wednesday nights. I don't want to get into an accent. Relax. Take a breath. I record them and you can wash them at your convenience. And also, while this show is free and will always remain free, if you find value in this content, will you click on that QR code right there? You can buy me a cup of coffee, you can schedule a 15-minute one-on-one call with me, after hours, of course. Or you can even buy Let's Talk Cabling Merchandise, even like this Estimate and Creed shirt that I've got on. So tonight's show was a show that was actually suggested by an audience member. I love doing these types of shows. He said, Chuck, can you do a show on terms and conditions? Now I spent quite a few years as an estimator, so I'm very familiar with terms and conditions. But let me ask you something. Have you ever signed something without actually ever reading it? Come on, be honest. You know we all have, except for my wife. Being a former paralegal, she reads everything, everything. And I'm glad for that, right? Most of us in the low voltage world, when you hear the terms terms and conditions, they don't realize, but that session can make or break your project. Now it's not just paperwork, like a lot of people seem to think it is, it is the rule book. I'll say that again. The rule book that decides how you're going to get paid, who owns the risk, and what happens when things go sideways. Let me know if you've ever been on a project where things didn't go sideways, right? So today we're going to break down what is terms and conditions, what they actually mean for you, whether you're the person actually pulling the cable or the person managing the schedule, like the project manager, or maybe even the designer estimator who's creating the terms and conditions, because protecting your work starts with understanding what you have agreed to do with your customer. So first, let's start off with defining what are terms and conditions in the context of low voltage contracting. Whenever you do a work for a customer, 99% of the time, I wish it'd be 100, but hopefully there's always a contract. And the contract documentation is going to have things like the scope of work, the bill of materials, the scheduling. And they should also have the terms and conditions. The terms and conditions which you base that pricing on, the terms and conditions on what you're going to be doing that work under. That should always be a part of everything that you submit to a customer. Along with the pricing and the scope of work, you should also have your terms and conditions. So what do they do? They break down the rules of engagement between you and your customer. Now they're going to be different than the scope of work. They're going to be different than the customer specifications. So, for example, in the scope of work, you're just going to be limited to things like we are going to pull 100 work area outlets. Each work area outlet will consist of two four-paracatory cables. The first one will be Cat 5E. The second one will be Cat 6. The Cat 5E will be blue, it'll be this part number. Cat 6A will be that part number. The cable is going to terminate on 110 blocks in patch panels on racks that we will install with Ladder Act. That's the scope of work. So let's define what are terms and conditions when it comes to low voltage contracting to us when we create that design, that proposal, and we submit that to the customer. The terms and conditions are the written rules that govern how the project will be executed, how the project's going to be paid for, and how the project's going to be closed out. What are the steps it's going to go through? It's also going to clarify that each party's rights, their responsibilities, and the remedies if something goes wrong. It will say that, hey, if this goes wrong, and we you can even put verbiage in the cut in the terms and conditions, will say, look, we will not sue each other, we will go through mitigation. That way it doesn't end up in court. In the long run, that's going to save you legal headaches and legal fees. Think of the terms and conditions as the fine print that becomes legally binding when once both parties agree. What they're going to do is they're going to protect you against assumptions that the customer might be making. The customer might, for example, you might want to put in your terms and conditions that you will not move any furniture over 50 pounds. A lot of times, it doesn't sound like a lot, but a lot of times with desks with credentials or returns, they can weigh a lot and they can get damaged pretty easily. You can put in the terms and conditions that any furniture over 50 pounds will be moved by by the customer prior to the technician actually pulling the cable to those designated areas. So that way they end up taking the risk on the moving the furniture and putting the furniture back. You can also put stuff in there too. For example, like if for scope creep, every project has scope creep. Scope creep just means little things get added on here and there, and that once was a seven-day project, is now a 14-day project. That is called scope creep. And they call it creep because it creeps up on you just a little bit here, a little bit there. Think of it as dying by a thousand little cuts. And that always happens. Customer always wants to do just a little bit extra here, a little bit extra there. And the technician in the field will often say yes because they want to make that customer happy. Again, you can't do that because you can only do what's in the actual contract, what's what's identified in the scope of work, what's identified in the terms and conditions. And it's also going to help protect you against those liability issues. Again, since you had that customer move those furniture away from the desk, away from the wall, I mean, you are no longer responsible if that desk gets damaged while their people move it away from the wall and then move it back. Now, where do terms conditions usually appear in proposals? Because in proposals, you're gonna have you might have like an executive overview section at the very beginning. That's the 50,000-foot view of what is the what's the over the high-level view of what the project is. And then you might get into sections like the scope of work. That's where you detail out specifically and as detailed as you can get what you're actually going to be doing. You'll also typically find a bill of materials, you're probably going to find scheduling, and you might even find uh purchase orders, maybe even change orders. And then usually the terms and conditions is the last few pages of that contract or that proposal that a lot of people don't read. And shame on them. They can differ slightly from project to project, especially between public and private work. Now, when I was an estimator, we had a template of terms and conditions that we would start off every when we start writing the proposal, we would pull in that boilerplate terms and conditions, and then we would delete anything in there that didn't apply to the project we were doing, added stuff to it, or maybe modify the existing stuff inside of it. That way you have a better chance of getting everything covered as if you start writing a terms and conditions from scratch every single time you do the project. What will most likely happen is the customer will either read the terms and conditions or ignore the terms and conditions and sign the proposal. If they sign the proposal, you're good to go. But be prepared that they may read through the terms and conditions and they may say, We disagree with this, and you might have to negotiate further with the terms and conditions. One of the biggest things that I hear all the time between people in the field and people who design projects is, well, that estimator never came out, never looked at the project. He never opened a ceiling towel. How does he know what's in the ceiling? A lot of times, as an estimator, you may not be given the opportunity to go out to the project and look in the ceilings. You might be juggling too many projects at a time. The timeline where the customer said, okay, you can come out and look at this between April 12th and April 15th, the estimator might not have been able to do that. Or better yet, the building may not even been built yet. In those scenarios, you can't walk around and look at the ceilings. So you have to make certain assumptions.

SPEAKER_01: 10:17

Let's take a short break. Are you trying to reach the technicians, project managers, and decision makers of the ICT industry? Then why aren't you advertising on Let's Talk Cabling? With over 150,000 impressions a month across podcasts, YouTube, and social media, this isn't just a show. It's the go-to resource for the low voltage industry. We spotlight the tools, training, and technology shaping the future of structured cabling. And your brand could be front and center. Don't just get noticed, get trusted. Email Chuck at advertising at letstalkcabling.com and let's connect your brand to the right audience today.

SPEAKER_00: 11:04

One of the biggest ones that I used to use all the time when I was not afforded the opportunity to go look in ceilings or look at a customer's drops. I would always put in, at minimum, these two terms and conditions. Term condition number one. This project is based on an average run length of 150 feet. After compiling all the test results, if we find that the average run length is more than 150 feet, we reserve the right to issue a change order to recoup extra material cost. 150 feet is the industry average of what a length is for a run for horizontal cable. And that's something that's been well known that we've been using for years. You may have a project that might be at 140 or 130, a small little retail office that might even only be 100 feet. Or you might have a longer building where they might be with module furniture, where they might be 180, 190, 200. When you look at all of the cable drops that you've ever poured over your entire career and you average them all out, the average is usually 150 feet. So that'd be the first one in there. And then the second one I put in there is the pricing in this proposal is based on clear and free interstitial space so that we can support our cables to meet codes and the ANSI standards. Now, what that does is that tells the customer if there's not enough room in the ceiling because the grid's too close to the slab or the concealing suggestion, that means we reserve the right to issue out a change order to recoup those extra labor hours and those extra material hours. Oh, by the way, I'm gonna have a list of 100, 100 boilerplate terms and conditions. You'll see the link for it in the description below. If you listen to this audio-wise, it won't be in that description, but it'll be on my YouTube video. It'll be in that description. We can go in, click on the link, and you can download those boilerplate template terms and conditions for your projects and use them, modify them, add to them, or delete to them to your heart's content. Now the key is when you send that proposal to the customer, and it's got the again, it's gonna have that executive overview, but have the scope of work, the bill materials, the scheduling. Uh you might even have to put in the company's safety plan, the company's quality insurance plan. Also put in the terms and conditions. Make sure that the contract verbiage is written such that that all of those documentations are accepted and brought into the proposal and accepted as a proposal. So as I said, the terms and conditions are really setting the expectations. It's creating documentation between you and the customer so everybody's on the same plane. They're on the same playing field. So that way everybody knows what's expected to be done before the crew shows up and pulls the first cable. So terms and conditions aren't just about what's included in the bid, it's also about what's not included in the bid. For example, cable testing. There's a huge, huge debate in our industry about whether you should test or certify cables. I'm not going to get into the difference between testing and certifying. Well, I have to in this scenario. Testing just as a simple continuity test. Certification, you're using a cable certifier, like a like a fluke certifier, an AEM certifier, a soft thing. You're using a very expensive tool documenting the electrical properties of the cable plan. They kick out a certification report and it will say pass or fail. It's going to measure a lot of things, way more things that's in the than it that's in a simple continuity test. So if you only price in doing testing, then you want to make sure that you put in the terms and conditions that this is based on doing a continuity test, looking for open, shorts, reversals, transposals, not certification testing. Certification testing can be done under a change order, or you might test. Some companies will like to just go ahead and test with a certifier, keep the documentation for themselves, the final reports, and then make that in the terms and conditions, saying that we will do in continuity testing. If the customer wants certification test results, they can be provided at an additional cost. That way you identify in that rule book, the rule of engagement, in the terms and conditions, that those aren't being supplied. See, the customer might only read the scope of work and say that you will test the cables. They may not understand that you don't that you may not have priced in certifying the cable because there's a labor cost difference and a material cost difference between testing for continuity and testing for certification. Certification testing, you're gonna be that test takes a little bit longer, and you have to roll in the price for the consumables, the permanent link heads. They're only good for about 5,000 insertions. So you need to put a little bit on the material side for every test that you do. So when you've tested 5,000 cables, you've captured enough funds to replace those permanent link heads.

SPEAKER_01: 16:09

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SPEAKER_00: 16:54

And the best thing the terms and conditions do is they are going to create a paper trail. So that way if a dispute arises, like you you always heard me say, rule number one on my pro tip list is document, document, document. Because if you didn't document it, it didn't happen. So the terms and conditions, they get they create that the paper trail. The terms and conditions create that paper trail so that if a dispute arises, you can solve that dispute right then and there. Or if it's a really big issue, it'll even talk about how to handle it legally. Is it going to be done through mitigation? Is it going to be done through mitigation in the home county and say state of the customer or the home county and state for the contractor? Because they may be different. You may be doing work for a customer in a different state. And if in your terms and conditions, you might want to put in there that any legal issues arising from the this issue of the contract or the performance of our work will be presided over the courts in whatever county, whatever state, your county, your state, so that way you don't have to go hire not a state attorney to fight that issue. Again, it's setting those rules of expectations. So just to kind of compare and contrast, because a lot of people will say, Chuck, why is that not written in the scope of work? The scope of work is going to tell you what is going to be done, and the terms and conditions define how it will be done. That's the difference between the scope of work and the terms and conditions. So the terms and conditions will define under what conditions the work is going to be performed. So every time you do work for a customer, you should have for your smaller jobs just a brief summary, the scope of work, the bill of materials, the pricing, the schedule, and then the terms and conditions. For your larger projects, you might want to have an executive overview instead of that, instead of that regular overview, the scope of work, the terms and conditions, the bill of materials, the scheduling, and any other the terms and conditions and any other ancillary things that they may want to have in there, like a copy of your safety plan, a copy of your quality assurance plan. Customers do ask for those sometimes. Here's a pro tip for you. If you don't have a quality program already created and written and documented, or a safety program written and documented, do it now. Create it, get it in writing, get it whatever you need to do, get it looked at, get your lawyer to sign off on it. So that way, when you get asked to provide it in the scope of work, you're not having to create it under a compressed schedule because you're doing such a big bid, you've already got it created, and it's gonna make your company a better company. You know, if you ignore your terms and conditions, that can make the scope of work and the customer specifications meaningless if a conflict arises. Because they're always gonna say, Well, you know what we meant. Knowing what you mean and documenting what you say are two different things. So the terms and conditions, that's an important document for not just for the estimator or the designer, they're also critical for the project manager. They're even more critical for the foreman or the lead technician running the job. Because if they don't know that the rules, they won't know what's billable and what's not billable. For example, going back to my average run length of 150 feet, if the project foreman knows that ahead of time while they're out there walking through the job site, determining which hallways and stuff they can go down, they can do a quick calculation to figure out, oh, we might go above our 150 feet per average run length for cable. Identifying it up front before you do the work is a lot easier to fix and negotiate that out with the customer than after the fact when you've already pulled the cable. Even though you might put it in your terms and conditions that your your runs are based on 150 feet or less, you can still enter into a huge dispute with the customer because they may not have read the terms and conditions. If you can fix that issue up front, that's gonna be easier. And if the performan knows that, the lead tech knows that, they can keep an eye out for that. That also is gonna help that that foreman or that lead tech understand who can perform, who is the person who authorizes extra work. Who's the person who can say this is a legitimate change order? I did a project once for um Bethesda Naval Hospital. We were out there pulling cables. This is a long time ago, back in the old 10 base 2 days, which was coax. I was pulling uh some coax cables to this lab going down this power pole, brand new power pole. We were pulling two new coax cables to it. The customer said, Well, we really need four. And they caught me while I was setting up to pull the cable. I was like, Well, that's okay. We can pull four to it because it's the same, it's the same amount of labor. The only thing was just the difference in the material. I didn't find out until later that the person who said that was the person was the doctor in that office. He was not the designated authorized person to issue out change orders. So, in that terms and conditions, you can put in verbiage that the customer will identify a point of contact, name, title, phone number, and email of the person authorized to issue and sign off on change orders. That way, when the foreman reads that, they know, okay, well, this didn't come from Bob Smith. This came from Dr. Harry Frank. Well, that person, Dr. Harry Frank, is not the person who can actually do issue out the change orders. The project managers are going to rely on the terms and conditions to protect their project budgets. I sell this in every single class I teach. A project manager's performance is based on their ability to bring the project in under the labor budget, under the material budget, under the schedule allotted time, and while meeting the customer's expectations. If you start doing anything outside of that where it increases the time or the budget, or it doesn't meet those budgets that were defined in the design, that project manager has to answer to somebody above them as to why they were not able to do that. And designers use them to align the deliverable and the expectations early in the process. Again, I mentioned many times you might not be given the opportunity to walk through the job site and look in those ceilings. So the gut the estimator has to make some assumptions and put those in the terms and conditions to protect themselves. So, what are some other things that you might find in the terms and conditions? You might find things like payment items, like payment terms. Are you billing 50% up front, the last 50% on the backside? Are you billing for your material up front? Will you be doing progress payments? Will you be billing, you know, if you're doing progress payments, are you gonna be billing the customer weekly, bi-weekly, monthly? Again, a lot of that depends on the size of the project. But if you don't spell it out, the customer's not gonna know what to expect when it comes to payments. Or they may say, well, wait a minute, we didn't agree to you billing me monthly. And then most importantly, it might even spell out the penalties for the customer making late payments. And what defines a late payment? You know, a lot of times when you issue out a contract, most invoices, when they're sent, they say typically will say they're due upon payment or they're due net 30. What does that mean? That means you got to pay it within 30 days of receiving it. Again, if it's not spelled out in the terms and conditions under the payment sections, the liability sections, the customer's not going to know that. You can also put stuff in that section to protect yourself against a very dangerous term called pay when paid. Pay when paid. See, a lot of times you'll you want this happens a lot with contractors and subcontractors, because you can have you can even have terms and conditions between those two relationships. A lot of times a contractor is going to try to put in there, we will pay you when we get paid. Well, what happens if the customer doesn't pay the contractor? That means you, the subcontractor, may not get paid. And since you signed off on it, you agree to pay when paid, they're under no obligation to pay you until they get paid. So if they have to go into some kind of legal dispute with the customer, which may take years, years to satisfy in a in a court, you're waiting for that for that payment for years, and you're losing that revenue. So never accept pay when paid situations. You can also put in there, if uh we already talked about it's gonna be net 30 or or due upon receipt. Okay, well, how much interest are you gonna charge them if they don't meet that time? What is gonna be the penalty if they on overdue payments? You can also specify what is the retainage percentages and what conditions will justify the release of that retainage. Now, for my foreman, my my field people who don't understand what a retainage is. A retainage is when you when you do a contract with a customer, they typically say they're going to retain 5%, 8%, 10%, 15%. The number varies between customer and contractor and and size of the contract. It's typically roughly about 10%, meaning that they will pay 90% of the project, and that last 10% doesn't get paid until certain circumstances are met. For example, the the customer receives the test results and the red lines and all punch items are signed off on and fixed that might be in there. And then they'll release that percentage. And if you've done a project, you know the hardest part of any project is the last 10%. The last 10%, getting those punch items taken care of, getting us all that documentation to the customer so they can sign off on. And now all that meanwhile, they're holding that 10%. 10% may not sound like a lot, but if it's a million-dollar project, that's$100,000.$100,000 that could have been in the bank earning interest for the company, for your company. And if you're a foreman, you may be thinking, well, Chuck, I really don't care about retaining those percentages. Again, a large enough percentage being held back could cause a financial strain on the company that you work for, especially if it's a small mom and pop organization. You know, another favorite section of mine is I already mentioned it once, is the change orders. What is the process for change orders? Again, identifying the name, the email, the phone number for the person. Yeah, you you might even want to put in the terms and conditions that the customer agrees to a kickoff meeting, and you can say in the terms and conditions, the minimum number of people to attend would be the customer, the customer's representative, the sign who's who's who's running the project, the person who's that has the ability to sign off on change orders, the your project manager, your project foreman. That way you get them all in the same place at the same time and hash that out and document it. Make sure again, who is who's the person for doing that that who's the person who can issue out that change order, who's the person who can sign off that change order. And make sure that you put in the terms and conditions that written authorization has to be signed before any work will be started with for the change orders. Always make it clear that you are not going to do any work, change order work, until it is signed. I remember taking a project management class many, many years ago, and they said that even if you get a signed change order, you still only have about a 85 to 90% chance of getting paid. Let that sink in. But Chuck, they signed the change order. I know. Customers still find ways to get out of those change orders. So, but if you don't have them signed, if you don't have the change order signed before you do the work, the chance of getting paid drops to 50%, sometimes even less. And whenever you're doing change orders to a project, you know, in my in my 40 plus years in this industry, I've only had one project go exactly the way it was designed, scheduled, and it went totally through. Not a single change order. When you do a change order to a project, you're adding material costs, you're adding labor costs, you're adding time to the schedule. Well, the customer may not may have a hard deadline, they may have a have to be out of their old facilities by Certain date and in their new facilities by a different date. So their schedule might not be movable. And they're adding on extra work, which means you now have to do maybe 11 weeks of work in 10 weeks. What does that mean? That means you might have to do the work under overtime conditions. Again, if you don't have yourself protected in there saying you might even want to have in your terms and conditions that all change orders will be done under overtime. That way you can still get done, especially if you know that the customer's schedule is not flexible. If the customer schedule is flexible, then you might want to delete that one out of the out of the boilerplate. And here's another one that a lot of people don't think about delays and the schedule. Delays because of weather, delays because of site access, delays because of coordination and responsibilities. Weather. But Shark, I live in Florida where you don't have to have hurricanes. What happens if a hurricane comes through? And now you don't have ways to get to your project. Or better yet, you're doing the project in Florida, but the materials are coming out of Minnesota, and Minnesota just got hit with a two-foot snowstorm. Well, two feet's nothing to Minnesota, but let's say a severe blizzard and they can't get material out. Well, that's going to affect you. And if you if the customer's got a tight schedule and you didn't identify that you will not be held responsible for delays due to weather or site access, the customer can still hold you to that. And now what you're going to have to do is you have to stop doing the work until the material comes in. And now you have to put more people on the job site than you had in the bid, working more hours accruing overtime, costing the project extra money. Again, if the foreman doesn't know this, they might just say, okay, well, no, we can't do any work today. Here's another one that the foreman really needs to know: site access. Again, a lot of times, especially on new construction sites, we might be working alongside other trades like electricians, HVAC, painters. You may not be able to pull cable in a certain part of the floor plan because the painters are painting there. And if you get your you've got your cable pool schedule set up to pull cables on that day, well, now you're gonna have to take those spools, move to a different part of the building, reset up, and start pulling cables. That's time and material that wasn't in the estimate. That's site access conditions. Now you might be saying, well, Chuck, you know, on your larger projects, you're gonna have weekly general contractor meetings. Yes. Yes. So make sure that you put in the terms and conditions that if they have a general contractor and there are weekly meetings, that we are invited to everyone, and we will get the meeting minutes from all meetings in case for some reason you can't attend them. So that way you can help eliminate those issues because a lot of times the general contractor works for the customer. All the other trades, the electricians, the HVAC, the painters, work for the general contractor, but typically we work for the end user, the customer. And so a lot of times we don't get that information that says, okay, well, the painters are gonna be in the northeast quadrant of the floor between April 1st and April 15th. And if you've done your schedule and you have in your terms and conditions, that the work is going to be laid out as per the schedule in the schedule section, any changes from that could justify a change order because again, you're gonna have to tear down and reset up. If you don't have that in the terms and conditions, you may not get paid for that. And if the technician, the lead tech, the foreman doesn't know that, again, they're geared to making sure that customer's happy. They're just gonna tear down, move to another section. They're gonna think that we just look, we're we we can adapt and overcome, not realizing sometimes, but that actually affects the overall financial outcome of the project. It also can define what is what qualifies as an excusable delay. Excusable delay. Now, for example, uh, I did a project when I used to work for a company in the DC area, and we did the cabling for the Supreme Court building. We did all the cabling for the Supreme Court building, and we put in the bid a certain amount of down hours every week because every time the Supreme Court justice would move, you know, either between their offices in the court or the library or whatever, the police, the Secret Service police would lock down the building, the capital police would lock down the building. And you couldn't do anything. So you had to build in a certain amount of excusable, a certain amount of downtime every day. That's an excusable delay. You can identify that in the terms and conditions. You can even put in the terms and conditions that you have to be notified within a specific time frame if a delay is going to occur. That's going to help you for when you have those kinds of issues, so that way you can plan around. You might say, okay, well, we won't be on job site that day. We'll go to do a job site over there and come back when it's ready to be done, ready to be when that work is ready to be performed. You can even clarify who's responsible when those delays stem from other trades or lack of access. Again, this is going to always be a gray area because the customer just say, well, wait a minute, you should have been coordinating with the trades. But if you didn't attend the construction meetings because you weren't notified, because the customer didn't make sure you were involved in that loop, then whose responsibility is it? If you have it in the terms and conditions, that again, the customer will make sure that you're included in that process and you will receive all the meeting minutes. Well, now you're notified of those delays. But if you didn't have them in the terms and conditions, if you didn't have that expectation set, you can run yourself into problems. Terms and conditions can also protect you from liquidated damages, right? If you especially if the delay wasn't your fault. Liquidated damages basically are if let's say, for example, you have a project where you say the customer says it's got to be done within 10 days. You've built out your design, you've said, okay, well, we can really get done in eight days, right? So you sign off, yes, not a problem. But then all of a sudden you start getting delayed because of the painters, delay because of the weather, delay because of the freight elevator on the building, because there's a new building, the freight elevator's not working yet. And that all adds that extra time. Well, now you're at 11 days, 12 days. Well, the customer might have liquidated jam just saying, hey, if you go past this 10 days, we are going to charge you X amount of dollars per day until you complete your project. That value can be as little as a couple hundred dollars, it's as much as a million dollars a day, depending on what the customer's business is. If it's a bank, you can expect that to be a pretty high number. If it's a if it's a veterinary office, it might be towards the lower side. Another issue that the terms and conditions can help resolve up front is the warranty. What is covered, what is not covered, and how long does the warranty last? And when does the warranty actually begin? Now you can start talking about warranties. You know, you have manufacturer warranties and you have your warranty. You can even put in your warranty that if there's no manufacturer warranty, you can put in your own warranty for your company that we will warrant this product for you know 30 days, 60 days, 90 days, a year. You pick the magic number, whatever you're willing to sign off on. You can also put in the terms and conditions that if it if it's going to come with a manufactured warranty or not come with a manufacture warranty. You typically, most of the times, you're gonna know that ahead of advance. And if you don't know, then I would put in verbiage in the terms and conditions that this does not include any manufactured warranties. That way, if they want to have that conversation afterwards, then it can also do that as well. So again, now you can set out your warranties, but now you can say, okay, what is what is the hourly rate for service calls, for warranty calls, right? Especially if it's something was not covered under warranty, like physical damage, right? So you can say, okay, we're gonna charge you X amount of dollars per hour, what's the minimum call out time? Is it one hour, is it two hours, is it four hours, and then how much you can charge per hour. You can specify what date does the warranty actually start, what what justifies the acceptance of the warranty, and when does that warranty end? That's a critical one there. So that way the customer doesn't call you 14 months after you've done the work to say, we got a warranty issue for you, but you only warranty for 12 months. Always putting your terms and conditions that any damage done by others or misuse are not covered under warranty. For example, if, and this happens a lot, we put in our structured cable plant, somebody will come in behind us, put in maybe like a uh a speaker system, and then they will pull the firestop out of our firestop systems to run the cable through, and they forget to put the firestop back in, or they don't know to put the firestop back in. Well, they're gonna call you back out, hey, you need to come out and and fix this. Well, sorry, that's the system misused. We installed it, somebody else took it out. If you put it in your terms and conditions, that the warranty excludes damage caused by others. Again, others can be other vendors, other subcontractors, or even the customer themselves. Otherwise, you're out there putting that firestop back in. And typically that's not gonna be found until they go for their final inspection, and the inspector says, wait a minute, why is the firestop putty laying on the ceiling tile? You should have firestopped that. Well, they're gonna think it was you. They're not gonna necessarily pay attention to, oh, I forgot that I had those Valcom guys doing the work for me. So if you put it in the terms and conditions that you had it done, pro tip number two, if you do stuff like that, firestop systems, always take a digital picture of each and every firestop on the project and make that part of the As Bill documentation. Okay? Make that part of the As Bill documentation. You know, the terms and conditions are also going to limit liability and indemnity. It's gonna limit, it's gonna limit the responsibilities for damages or design errors. This is another one of those heated areas of discussion. Well, Chuck, shouldn't a low voltage contractor be responsible for the poor design? Maybe. Maybe. What if during the design phase they ish they they did not get the complete information? They did not get, let me know if this ever happened to you. They didn't get the most current drawings. Most current drawings, which showed where all of the electrical is going to be placed. And then so they were working off an old set of prints. Well, okay. Should the contractor be should we as the live voltage contractors be nailed because of that? Yes, we should put in our terms and conditions that we should be issued the latest version of all prints with the latest versions of them, and any new versions within X amount of days of them being issued, so that way you get the current set of copies, that's still always going to be a problem there. So the design area might be wrong because they updated something after the estimator did the walkthrough. See, most people don't understand. Once the estimator creates the design, creates the estimate, writes the proposal, sends the proposal to the customer, very rarely does the customer, okay, you call them back. Yeah, you know the email you sent me this morning? Yeah, can you start? A lot of times, it could be days, weeks, months until you get issued that that yes, you got awarded that project. And if it's a new construction site and the contract, the estimator walked that job site during construction. Do you think that construction site might have changed in 30 days, 45 days? Absolutely, site conditions change. Absolutely. So you can again put in your terms and conditions that site conditions changing, you know, major site condition changes, you know, are justifiable for change orders. So let's talk about why the terms and conditions matter to everybody. From the technician out on the job site to the foreman to the project manager to the designer. You know, for the technicians pulling the cables. A good lead tech, a good project foreman will share that information with their crews. Because a lot of times the foreman may not see everything that's happening on the job site, but the technicians do. They're there. They're seeing the stuff actually happening. So make sure that they get a copy of the terms and conditions. So that way, even the technician, like I was doing that work in that hospital. I was just at the time, I was just a cable installer. If I had known, if I'd been issued the terms and conditions and I'd have known that that was not the right person to pull those extra cables, I could have protected us from losing the material cost. You know, the technician, knowing what limits your work, protects you from doing unpaid or unauthorized work. Documentation matters. If it's not written, like I said earlier, it did not happen. And for the technician out in the field, it's gonna help them understand who can authorize the changes, and that's gonna prevent you headaches later on. For the project managers and the designers, right, the terms and conditions, they're gonna help leverage you when the scope starts creeping or the client starts shifting expectations. Because remember, the terms and conditions set the rules of engagement on the date that they were signed, and because they're part of the contract, they are legal documents. So the customer can't change it afterwards without having some kind of a change to the contract. You can't just, oh well, we don't want you to do that, we'd do this this other way. No, you have to have a change to the contract because you went into this relationship expecting to do pulling the cables on day one through day five, terminating day six through seven, testing day eight, cleanup day nine, day ten, you know, final stuff. But now they're changing stuff around, and because of site access and other stuff, you don't even get done pulling cable till day seven. Well, you're way behind. And that's the wrong time to be talking about that with the customer. I should I should do another show later on about documentation, creating a Foreman's logbook so that way you can document that stuff. So again, the project manager, it's gonna help manage those, it's gonna help them protect their performance is based on, you know, one of the things I mentioned was the customer, the schedule. So it's gonna help prevent that customer from keep tacking on change orders, keep or the site conditions changing, it's gonna help protect that project manager against those unrealistic timelines set by the customer. And it happens. It's nothing personal, it happens. Strong terms and conditions are going to help reduce the conflict and help preserve those profit margins. It's gonna also emphasize teamwork between the project managers and the field crew. They both understand the contract. Everybody now can make better decisions because again, the earlier you can identify that issue, the quicker to resolve that issue, the less impact it's gonna have to the project. So, just as a call to action, if you're a technician, a pool uh or cable puller or a foreman on the job, at minimum a foreman, make sure you get a copy of the scope of work, the bill of materials, the schedule, and the terms and conditions. Those are the four main documents that you should have. Well, in the blueprints, five main documents. There you go. Those are the five main documents that you need to have to make sure that you can do that project correctly. Review them before you start doing the project. I always tell people read the scope of work, read the terms and conditions three times. The first time you're, especially on your larger projects, the first time you're just starting to kind of get a feel for the size of the project, the second time you start getting the uh the better understanding by the third time you're picking out all the details. Read it, read it, read it. Don't just throw it in your folder and never touch it again. Again, because if you didn't know that the design was based on the average run, like the 150 feet, and then when you go test the cables and you find, well, because you would have used a different hallway because site conditions changed, and you didn't know it was in the terms and conditions that that was a legitimate change order, well, no, you just burned a bunch of labor and material that wasn't in the bid. Wasn't in the bid. So yeah, make sure we review them because again, those are the those are the those are the ground rules. Don't be afraid to ask questions, especially if something doesn't make sense. And I'm gonna tell you right now, when you read through, when you read through the scope of work, when you read through the terms and conditions, a lot of times because it's written in legal leads like, Chuck, uh, what does interstitial space mean? Ask those questions. Well, okay, well, interstitial space, one of the terms and conditions we used to use all the time. And I mentioned it earlier that this this bid was based on free and clear interstitial space above the ceiling to meet codes and standards to support the cables that at maximum lengths of um three to five feet. Interstitial space is the space from above, from the ceiling tile to the concrete above it. That's that hidden space that we use commonly to run our cable. If you didn't put that in there, and then when you open up the ceiling tile and you find that you know there's not enough space, well, you gotta you gotta support the cables a different manner, might need different material, might be more expensive material, might take longer to install. If you didn't have it in your terms and conditions, you just bought it. There's no there's no way you can turn it back to the customer. So just to kind of close this out, just remember that protect yourself. Protect yourself by knowing what that what you have agreed to, what your company's agreed to before you start pulling the cable. Again, that's those five documents I just talked about. Because at the end of the day, the terms and conditions aren't about slowing you down or adding to the red tape. They're about keeping you safe. The best techs, the best project managers, the best designers know exactly what their contract says before before the first box, cable box, hits that job site. So before your next project kicks off, make sure you take however long it takes, 10 minutes, 30 minutes, an hour, a day or two, to read through and understand again, the scope of work, the bill of materials, the schedule, the terms and conditions, and those blueprints. Okay? Make sure you what's covered, what's not covered. Make sure you save that time and that profit and avoid those. Oh, I didn't know that. I didn't know that that person wasn't the one who could sign up on that project. Again, the terms and conditions would have saved you for that. So remember, knowledge is power. Read it, understand it, and use it to your advantage. Again, I'm gonna put that list of 100 terms and conditions in the descriptions below.