From Complexity to Simplicity in your Supplier Contracts with Sarah Fox

In today's episode, we're honoured to host Sarah Fox, a trailblazer in simplifying the intricate world of contracts and deal-making. With over 25 years of experience, Sarah's expertise shines through as she shares real-world examples of streamlining processes and making deal negotiations smoother for SMEs, subcontractors, and large corporates alike. Join us as we explore the empowering journey of turning the dull subject of contracts into an actionable toolkit, revolutionising the way businesses think about and execute their deals. Get ready for insights, inspiration, and a roadmap to faster, stronger business relationships.

ABOUT THE GUEST

Sarah Fox is an expert in simplifying deals and is the creator of the 500 word construction contract. She works with corporates to streamline their contracting and shape success. Sarah is also a speaker, consultant, author and trainer. 

Discover more here:

Website:       https://500words.co.uk/blog/
YouTube:      https://www.youtube.com/c/SarahFox
LinkedIn:       https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarahjvfox/

ABOUT THE HOST

My name is Dave Barr and I am the Founder and Owner of RLB Purchasing Consultancy Limited.

I have been working in Procurement for over 25 years and have had the joy of working in a number of global manufacturing and service industries throughout this time.

I am passionate about self development, business improvement, saving money, buying quality goods and services, developing positive and effective working relationships with suppliers and colleagues, and driving improvement through out the supply chain.

Now I wish to share this knowledge and that of highly skilled and competent people with you, the listener, in order that you may hopefully benefit from this information.

CONTACT DETAILS

@The Real Life Buyer
Email: david@thereallifebuyer.co.uk
Website: https://linktr.ee/thereallifebuyer

For Purchasing Consultancy services:
https://rlbpurchasingconsultancy.co.uk/
Email: contact@rlbpurchasingconsultancy.co.uk

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Click here for some Guest Courses - https://www.thereallifebuyer.co.uk/guest-courses/

Click here for some Guest Publications - https://www.thereallifebuyer.co.uk/guest-publications

Transcript

Introduction  00:00

Welcome to The Real Life Buyer podcast. In this podcast, you will hear interviews with business owners, entrepreneurs, thought leaders, authors and technical specialists in their field. These professionals will hasten your development, accelerate your career and broaden your business know how. Now introducing your host Dave Barr, interviewing with a purchasing twist.

Dave Barr  00:21

Hello and welcome to The Real Life Buyer. In this episode, we're joined by Sarah Fox, a maestro in simplifying business processes and deal making strategies. With over 25 years of experience in the legal profession. Sarah has transformed the mundane realm of contracts into a dynamic toolkit for enhancing customer experience and fortifying business relationships. Sara is not just a speaker, consultant and trainer, she has a guide to streamlining complex processes, making deal negotiations smoother, quicker and more effective. Join us now as we explore Sarah's insights on revolutionising deal making, empowering teams with confidence and unlocking success in the world of business. So without further ado, I welcome Sarah onto the podcast, Sarah. 

Sarah Fox  01:10

Hi, Dave, how you doing? 

Dave Barr  01:11

Very well, thank you lovely can join me this dark damp night in in the UK. So let's familiarize the audience with yourself. Make sure that they understand who you are, where you come from, shall we say. So if you could tell everybody about your background, perhaps some of the key events that led you to become a legal guru, if I may say that, that helps to making deals much simpler.

Sarah Fox  01:34

My potted history. So I became a construction lawyer for my sins, I did a maths degree got into law through devious means, and became a construction lawyer. And I really liked the fact that we were doing something positive. They're quite a pragmatic industry, pragmatic sector. But we were negotiating long, complicated contracts for quite a lot of the time. And it didn't feel like anyone was very happy when we had got them negotiated and signed, I then kind of morphed into doing a lot of training with clients and with lawyers about these contracts. And It rapidly became really apparent that nobody really understood them, even if they'd read them. And that included the lawyers. So the UK construction sector has a wide range of over 150 standard form contracts. They're often amended by lawyers, and they become quite big documents, sort of 50,000 words, plus, and they weren't really reflecting the deal. You know, I came across contracts where I couldn't actually work out what the deal was between the parties. So in a conversation in Ed's Diner in Houston, I was chatting to my sister about this. She's not a lawyer, she's a chemical engineer by background, she'd come across some contracts, which she also thought were a bit rubbish. And she said, Well, you know, what, what are you going to do about it, of course of moaning about contracts, as I normally do? And I said, Well, you know, maybe we should see if we can write one in 500 words, so and that was a challenge. She kind of dared me. And I'm like a day. So I created this idea. And I couldn't take any of the contracts and kind of just take stuff out, because, well, that would have taken me forever. So I started from first principles. And I know that if you have agreed the scope, and the fees, you've got the basis for a contract in English law, so I have to start there. So we've got the parties, we've got things like time, cost and quality. So I built out my 10 Essentials for a contract, and then try to work out the way that I could write that with the smallest number of words. And I try to avoid legal jargon, because I know that for a lot of people who aren't lawyers, legal jargon is just another reason not to read a contract, I got involved in plain language. In order to do that. To make it really simple. I got involved in things like information design and legal design, because I didn't want it to look like another set of text on the page. So we ended up with colors and tables and what they call swim lanes, which is columns representing the party's interests. We looked at trying to make them balanced because I, I also wanted to try and reduce the amount of time it took to negotiate because so often, I'd seen contracts start quite one sided and get more moderate as they negotiated it. And part of me was thinking, why don't we just start in the middle ground and cut through all the, you know, posturing and the, you know, some sort of kind of gamesmanship, that contracting was going through. So when I introduced this as a training tool and workshops, I had a lot of really positive feedback going. We need something a bit like this in our business, because at the moment, nobody really understands them. We kind of gluing up the whole business with these complicated documents. We'd like something that's actually so clear, we can give it to people before they've even decided to do a deal with us and just go, this is what it would be like to do business with us. You know, you can put it on your website, you can put it in your proposals or quotes or estimates, you can be really upfront because you've got a moderate, easy to read, easy to understand document so you haven't got the barriers between sales and marketing and legal. You kind of just made it a completely streamlined, seamless process. And that for me start, you know, that started to spark quite a lot of ideas about not just the content, but also how that really feeds into process. 

01:36

Okay, it's really quite interesting. You know, we were talking earlier about some of the huge contracts that are out there, particularly in construction. And we think you mentioned 50,000 words down to 500. Words is was just incredible. Unbelievable, basically. And we were talking about the difficulty and people getting their heads around that they're so used to having such lengthy, complicated contracts. And as you say, they don't necessarily understand them. But that's the norm, isn't it? Yeah, absolutely.

05:41

People felt comfortable with the discomfort of long contracts, if you see what I mean. And in fact, lots of people turned around to me and said, You can't do it. I said, Well, I think you can this is you can't do it, I think a half and they still wouldn't believe me. So I ended up writing the books to try and explain why it worked. And what the words were so that they actually couldn't, you know, they had all the arguments, because I had to go through this myself, because lots of people when I first saw it said, I kind of liked the idea as a concept, but you can't really use it. Can you? Like lawyers would say, I really like the idea, but our clients would never pay as much for this sort of type of contract. Exactly. Yeah. There's a lot of vested interests. Yeah. Try to keep with the norm.

Dave Barr  06:25

IYeah,  guess in some ways, as you said, there's a key thing there about the cost of producing the contract would reduce significantly, which is great for one side, one party, but for the legal profession probably isn't something they have a great appetite for. It doesn't justify their job in some respects. So yeah, I can see where that's a threat, perhaps you will seem to be somebody who's disrupting everything, perhaps a little bit too much for their own comfort.

Sarah Fox  06:51

There were a number of people who just wanted to put me back in my place.

Dave Barr  06:55

Exactly. So let's, let's talk about some examples. Can you share any specific examples or you know, what that you could feel comfortable about, from obviously, 25 years experience doing this where that business deal, like new contract, that new style had a profound impact on both the deal making process and the relationship that you were then had between the parties.

07:17

So generally speaking, over the years, I found it easier to get data from smaller businesses, because there's fewer people involved in the process. So they've got a much better handle on how much time it takes them. You know, most companies, about 25% of the workplace are involved in contracts. So if you have a big company, it passes through too many hands to get that data. And this is, obviously I started before, we had all these platforms, it could record all that information. But when I started working with small and subcontractors who were doing big value works, but there was a small team of them. They just said, No, first of all, it's taking us less time to put it together. Because it's a it's a really simple format. We can share it with our clients, and they read it. So the suppliers are coming back. All the clients are coming back and saying yes, quicker, more of them are saying yes, because there's no barrier because they they don't kind of get that icky position of we liked you. But the contracts can put us off a bit. So yeah, some some of the places some of the companies said there was an architect that I worked with, she went from taking four hours to put a proposal together to 45 minutes, she improved her conversion rate by fourfold because wasn't a barrier anymore. It was just easy, simple. People got it read it said yes. So you know, it was much easier for her to do that deal.

Dave Barr  08:36

Yeah, yeah, I can understand. Certainly, I've been, in my experience, certainly with dealing with Chinese companies, for example, where they don't particularly value contracts. They value relationships. Yeah. And when they see a lengthy contract, then think, Oh, my goodness, this translation alone is going to be challenging for them. Yeah, no, I've seen relationships I've had with suppliers soured in some respects. You have a great discussion, you have a great agreement about principles and you want to move forward, and then you present them with the corporate agreement, especially for the small guys. They say, Whoa, hold on a minute, you know, this isn't what I expected. We were having a great conversation. They've given me a 40 page document that's full of legalese. I haven't really got the funds the money to pay for lawyers to try and go through this, you know, cake we move forward. And that's where what was a great position to be in and everybody was on my good place, to suddenly having some difficulties and you know, I said the relationship soured everything, come to a grinding halt.

09:36

Yeah, a friend of mine contacted me recently they were starting a franchise for a business and they'd gone to a franchise firm. They'd got a really nice franchise pack which basically said you know, how great it would be to take on this franchise, and then they also the same company had provided them with a franchise agreement and the minute it was sent to these potential franchisees they were backing off and going well man the land Which, and, you know, I said, Well, give me both of them. And when I looked at them, they weren't, they weren't in harmony, they were, you know, completely disparate documents, and we have to save the relationship. So by simplifying the whole thing, bringing it all together to make it coherent, they managed to save it, they did manage to get these franchisees on board, but, you know, they paid a lot of money for this and got something which was causing issues, not drawing people in and, you know, we're human to human, we like to draw people in pushing people away with documents is a really bad mistake. 

Dave Barr  10:32

Yeah, people don't understand something, they're naturally going to be uncomfortable. They don't want to sign things they want to take their time. Everything, you know, is negative, basically. So you've taken these massive contracts, construction, particularly now how on earth, you get the salient points. So shall we say, and I'm thinking particularly here of SME businesses with low budgets, that must been a lot of money subcontractors we mentioned, how do you take these complex contracts and refine it down? You know, what things do you keep in? What's the classic things that you throw away? For example, are there any, any examples of that?

11:06

Yeah, classic things I throw away is things that are just too legal. So I've always said to people, when you're negotiating a contract, if you come across a clause that you don't know what it does ask the other side and don't say, what does it mean? Ask what does it do? Because often is meaningless, small print at the back of a contract. So there's something called boilerplate, often, it comes down to the title of miscellaneous or general, get rid of it, generally speaking, either the courts will take their own opinion, or it won't make a difference in you know, every case except one in a million, but also take take a look at the topics and say, you know, is this a topic that's actually relevant to this project, because quite often, you know, that deal really well, you know, the way you do business, you know, what's already been passed between the parties, you know, what's actually important, and it's too easy for people to kind of pad their contracts with things that you owe, everybody else has got something about data protection, massive, long clauses, everybody else has got something about corruption, massive, long clause. Well, some of this stuff is dealt with by legislation. If we just say you will comply with the legislation, then we don't have to say all the tiny little details, but the other thing I always try and do is persuade the clients to have a front page, which has the bare bones of the deal. So it summarizes who's doing what, when, where and how much they're gonna get paid. And it can have references to payment schedules, and works documents and details about tests and specifications. But I think having something that you could put on the fridge or have on your smartphone as a real summary of what's important focuses of mind, because too often the details of the deal are buried, and hard to find. And I think that's a real mistake. So I like to look at the obligations for the two parties, how they work together, how they share information, documents, data, how the project might change, and then how they will resolve disputes. And if necessary, have them in the contract. And those are the core ingredients that you need. A lot of the other stuff is optional. And I've I've edited contracts across loads of different sectors. And genuinely I say to people, how often have you use this? Is this relevant to your sector? Because I'm not a specialist in every sector, per se? Is this relevant to your sector? How often has it come up? Is it an issue that you've ever had with clients? Because if it's not, then the purpose of a contract is actually to build a relationship from which you can have grown up conversations. So you can't deal with absolutely everything that may or may not happen. And we found that in the pandemic, even the 50,000 word contracts said nothing about pandemics

Dave Barr  13:41

10,000 words for that.

13:42

So 1000 words doesn't cover everything anyway. So the purpose of a contract isn't to be comprehensive it's to build a relationship and give a framework for better discussions or future discussions so that you can have long lists about why you might want to change this contract. Or you can just say, if either of the parties wants to change it, we'll sit down and have a discussion and agreed the impact on the things that we've agreed on page one, we don't need to get into the minutiae too quickly because that smacks of a nannying approach to contracting and this is not about you, and you know, one being more powerful than the other. Okay? We often think that the person paying is more powerful, but actually they need the skills, expertise, goods works or the supplies of the other party. So there's still a much better dynamic to be had. And we have to, you know, we're interdependent in business, so we can't just go, oh, yeah, well, I've got the money, therefore, I'm gonna treat you like this. That's not a great way to build a relationship. So if it doesn't build a relationship, or if it's blindingly obvious, or if there's legislation that deals with it, check it out. Because I think contracts should change behaviors or reinforce the behaviors we want to see. And if they don't do that, it's the closest don't do that. Then there's an old Given that they really don't belong in that contract,

Dave Barr  15:02

What do you think the legal profession has to say purposely taking something that is legislated in law anyway and try to build it into these contracts? Is it something that is a catch all they fear for that they won't get everything? Is it? Is it a case that they want to make sure they get a good paycheck? At the end of the day? You know, what do you think's the drivers behind this, you know, burden some attitude?

15:25

Well, it's interesting, because I think of originally when contract started to be drafted about 150 years ago in the UK, and we started to have written contracts. And the court started to interfere because before that they hadn't interfered in contracts. I think the laws were paid by the length of contract, because that was the only way to measure because a lot of the people who were looking at these contracts couldn't actually read them, either because they weren't even literate or because it was too complicated legally. So then they started to be paid back on this idea of being paid by the insurer, the centimeter or number of words, I think, when contracts first came out, when the first engineering came out in about 1907, they were only about 20 pages long. So they started small. And then as they've gone to court, and as people have used them, they've seen things that have happened, and they've built that in so every time something goes wrong of a contract, people try and work their way around it with kind of overengineered the whole thing. And a lot of it is a risk aversion from lawyers, because they worried that they will get sued if they miss something out. A lot of it is clients not being able to say actually, the core essence of the deal is this, write it down? Don't add anything else, unless you think it's absolutely essential. And I think there's been this mismatch between what clients are interested in deals and what lawyers are interested in deals for some time, and world commerce and contracting, which is really interesting organization does loads of research on this about what's the most negotiated terms, I think what comes up in the negotiations more often? What's the most important terms? What are the buy side, sell side or lawyers think are important? And what's the biggest cause of disputes? And there's no, there's no consistency between those things, even between what the lawyers think are important, what clients think are important, there's no consistency. So we know that there's this complete mismatch between the business side of doing business and the legal side of reflecting how they do business. So we've got some way to go before we end up with contracts, which are properly tools to help us do business.

Dave Barr  17:23

Would you say that some of this has been exacerbated by to say the propensity in some cultures, some locations around the world to take legal action at the drop of a hat?

17:33

Yep, absolutely. And in fact, I've dealt with businesses where you can see almost a history of they're running their business in their contracts, because every time something's happened, they put a clause in that says, You will not do X, you will not do this, you will not do that. Now you're treating everyone as if they're going to try and get one over on you. And that's not a way to build a relationship. So yeah, there is that, you know, the length of the amount of your paranoia might be reflected by the length of your contract. Also copy and paste has made things so much easier to copy big chunks of long clauses and not worry about it. If we had to pay by the clause, we might reduce our contracts.

Dave Barr  18:08

Yeah, I've seen quite a few times where two parties have reached an impasse. They have lawyers sat next to them. They're having all these arguments about what's right and wrong, and what's fair and not fair. And quite often, since a few times now, the guys who run the business, ask the lawyers to go and get a coffee, and then they actually sort the deal out themselves. Is that something you're finding more common now?

18:32

Well, I tend not to negotiate on behalf of my clients in any way, because I reckon it does change the nature of the negotiations, it makes it more about the kind of little granular legal stuff and less about the deal. I think my clients know how to know what the deal is. And I think they're the ones best able to say, Okay, this is a core essence of the deal, I will guide them, I do contract reports, I do a traffic light system, these are the things I think you absolutely have to negotiate out, or at least talk to in a room, you know, these focus on these other things, which I'm slightly worried about, and you need to kind of make a decision on. And this is just a whole load of process that you need to be aware of when you do get into this deal. And I try not to have more than about four or five red flags, things that they absolutely absolutely must change. And a lot of them have, you know, they've just crept in, people have seen them in other people's contracts or not got Lana copying, chuck that into my contract, but they don't reflect a decent balance between the parties at all. So I think negotiation business to business is much better than negotiation lawyer to lawyer. But in order to do that, you need contracts that are simple enough for the business to do that. And I think, you know, the whole idea of simplifying the content to make it user friendly changes a whole process because it means that buyers and sellers can get together and do the deal and then reflect it and say yeah, this contract I've read it reflects what we agreed, tick, let's go.

Dave Barr  19:56

Have a bit of common sense and half the time. No, no, no Have a look at your LinkedIn brief. I've seen the emphasis on the importance of empowering teams with confidence in dealing with business processes. Can you provide some insights into a training or consulting engagement where you witnessed a team undergoing a transformation where they've gained the skills and confidence to take control of their deals?

20:20

Yeah, so I've done quite a lot of training with companies. And some of them I've had relatively sophisticated, no contract review processes. But often when I say, Can I have a look at your internal documents, we ended up doing those as sorting those out as well, because some of the contract review documents have had questions which aren't objective, they might have said, you know, do we have a good payment history? Or how does anyone know what the payment history between two companies is? You could answer two completely different questions. So talking to the people and just saying, Look, this is a contract. Let's explain it. Let's kind of unpick it late. Let's give you the confidence to be able to look at your own contracts and go Oh, I get it. Now. I know why this is important. Now, when I look at this, I don't feel you know, on the backfoot I don't feel that this is not my job. So we did a lot of training with an m&e subcontractor doing contract awareness, just saying, Look, this is what your contracts saying, This is what your processes, this is how it all fits together, you now have all the tools and we did activities around things, we kind of gave them really good case studies, we looked at some of the cases which we turned into case studies, not because the law is interesting, but because it helps them to think how they would behave, and to kind of have a bit of fun with it. And they did genuinely find that they were less bothered about contracts afterwards. And I've done it with infrastructure companies where they said, You know what, I've been loads of training about contracts. And this is the first time I've understood why it matters to me. And that, to me, is important, because I don't want to turn anyone on my courses into a lawyer. I want to turn them into someone who's got confidence with their contracts. So they can just rather than it being something sitting on the edge of their desk getting smellier and familiar, which I think, which is John Grisham used to talk about fish files, things that just sit on your desk and get smelly and smellier. Well, for most people, that's contracts. I want people as you say, to be empowered to just go Yeah, it's not scary. It's important. I can do it, move on, and then get on with doing the bit that I really love, which is doing the project.

Dave Barr  22:20

Yeah, yeah. Always comes across that you've created in your books. And we'll obviously mentioned that in a little bit. And almost like a do it yourself approach in some respects. So you've done books and blogs, you talk about contract conversations, it's quite interesting. So for the listeners, who are particularly SME owners and purchasing professionals, how would they benefit practically from your resources in simplifying their contracting process? Do you have any specific advice or examples you'd recommend for a small business or, you know, a, perhaps a junior procurement person, you know, how they would take the work that you've done, and incorporate it into their daily life?

22:58

Yeah, so that's a really good question. I want to empower people, because I think that for particularly for SMEs and startups, they don't have the financial ability to get lawyers involved and everything else. So I've created checklists where they can review a contract that comes into them, they can review a contract, they've written themselves, I've created all sorts of resources on my website, help people to kind of not fear that paperwork, or digital or hardcopy that comes across their desk, because I think I need people to kind of start small sometimes, you know, Rome wasn't built in a day, and neither is getting from hating contracts to loving them. That's not going to happen today. But I really want people to, you know, use the information in my blog to just search for things that they hear all the time, they don't quite understand, or they think they understand know, we have terms like fitness for purpose, you hear it all over the place now. But that's quite a technical term. And I want to demystify that, so that the jargon isn't a problem, then the processes aren't a problem. And then the content is not a problem. So you've got to start somewhere. And my website basically gives you a sort of where you, wherever you are, here's a step that you can take, and small steps will get you closer to being better at this.

Dave Barr  24:17

Yeah, nice, plain English, good examples, explaining what these things mean. Did you say fitness for purpose? Yeah, I do understand that. And that can be extremely complicated, depending on the application. So absolutely. So collaboration we talked about is often key to negotiations. So what kind of collaborative strategies have you found most effective in overcoming the challenges and accelerating deal making?

24:42

So I think there's a couple of things. One is to have a more collaborative contract. Now, there was a number of contracts that say they're collaborative, but yet they their balance is is not apparent in the contract. So having a balanced contract with mutual provision, so if somebody has a limit on liability, you both have a limit on liability if somebody has time period, they have to do something, you both have a time period, you have to do something. It's a mutual interdependent exchange. But another collaborative way of making the deal simpler is to just be upfront much quicker. Now, we tend to leave legals to the last minute, and then it's a rush job, and then the pressure is on, you haven't got the ability to step back and go, Oh, hang on, hang on. We've been talking about this for months. And now you're giving me this. So I think, you know, being collaborative means also being prepared to say, this contract doesn't work for this project. Because these two parties on this project, it's not quite right, we need to have the ability to make proposals and say, Actually, we need to make a change and being prepared to make a change, because it has to work for both parties. And I've had so many people provide me as a contract person with a contract saying, don't read it, just sign it and send it back. And it's like, you didn't know what I do for a living, I will read it. And if I don't like it, I will say so. And I've refused to work with some people because they would not change their contracts. And if they're too one sided, I say, Look, I don't want to work for you, I want to work with you. And if you don't want that, or you're not prepared to change, or you haven't got the authority to make that change, then I'm out. So I will refuse to work with people who don't want to be collaborative from the start. And I think all of that is being you know, being open to the fact that business is a two way street. And just because other people sign it doesn't mean I should.

Dave Barr  26:32

Just thinking, Do you think that driver is fear, though? The fear that something may go wrong, and they're the one who signed something off, they've agreed something which they may or may not should have done, and that could cost the company a lot of money?

26:45

Yes, it's fear. Sometimes it's a fear that you if you say no to this deal, you're going to not have enough, you're not going to get something to replace it. But you have to say no to the bad to be able to say yes to the good later on. And often I found that when I got a bit of a strange feeling about a contract or a company, the ones I said yes to turned out to be a mistake. So it's better to kind of sometimes go with your gut or your heart or what your head or whichever part of your body is saying that's kind of giving you warning signals than it is to kind of struggle on and try and make it better. Because it is you know about relationships. And I think we have to be prepared to say, our businesses important enough that we're not going to take any old stuff, just because we have to be able to say, No, I want to take stuff that feels like that looks like that sounds right. And that is going to work for this business long term. Because if you've got a collaborative contract nice and early on, then you'll make it work. And then whatever happens, however many pandemics and wars and strikes and everything else.

Dave Barr  27:48

Okay. Now, we've mentioned a few things now about your books you mentioned about your blog. So where can people find the information that we're talking about today? Can you tell us about your books as well? What's out there and what could help people?

28:00

So I wrote I've written five books since 2016 was my first one, I looked at letters of intent, which are very common in the UK construction sector. I've looked at consultants, appointments, collateral warranties, which are kind of quite unique to the construction sector, small work contracts and subcontracts. And I really wanted to provide the background why I think it's important to have a simple contract, the wording you can use what happens if you put nothing in your contract, can you have in fact a zero word contract? I try not to suggest that, you know, there are limits. But those books are all available on Amazon, there is a suite of five, you can also go to my book site, which is just 500 words.co.uk. My website is 500 words.co.uk. And that's got all the information about speaking consultancy. My free stuff has my blog, signups to my contract conversations. So all sorts of ways that you can get more help, whatever you need, there's something on there for you. 

Dave Barr  28:59

Ok, so that's five books. They say they're all up all on Amazon. Now they're in the format you can download like a Kindle versions as well.

29:08

Ebook and paper book. And the Kindles are just 500 Pence, they're five pounds, or the equivalent in your local currency. I try to I like the I like things to be round numbers. I'm not a four pound 99 sort of person. So yeah.

Dave Barr  29:25

Okay, so just a last thing. Now, we've said we talked about different sectors, construction, manufacturing, engineering contracts, and some of the history that's occurred, which were those and how you've consolidated those. So just for people who are not aware of the complexities, the realization that some like the construction is so much heavier than the others, what have been the inferences that have made that distinction between that sector and the others?  

Sarah Fox  29:54

That's a really good question. I think. Traditionally, engineering sectors have used a sink all professional bodies to create their standard form contracts. They're often written by engineers for engineers. So they're written by users for users. Back in 1931, the joint contracts tribunal was formed in the UK construction. And that was a an overall committee body representing all sorts of different interests. Now, you'd have thought that that would make a better contract, and it probably would have done but drafting by committee is not always the way to get simplicity. So there's quite a lot of language, which shows that it's kind of a compromise, it doesn't really suit any body, but it's kind of the closest to suiting everyone a bit. So I think they changed quite dramatically in fairly early on when the contracts were being proposed. Now the first JCT contract in 1963. So it took them 30 years to write to agree the wording for their first contract, the first contract was only 25 pages long, but they've sort of taken quite a much more sort of it has to be comprehensive approach. I think engineering has taken a while this is a flowchart for this process. And some of the engineering contracts used to have flowcharts. And text seems to be the preferred method of exchanging information now, but I'm not sure why that should be and engineering contracts or just be more pragmatic, I think saying we know things are going to change because we're going on to a site, we're building something, it's going to change, we need to test it, we want functionality. I think engineering contracts are will be always be more interested in the outputs, does it work? Can we test it? Can we sort it out and knowing that it will be maintained from the day it's finished anyway. And then construction contracts have taken a much more kind of granular approach to the process of construction. Rather than thinking about the operation bit being important. They've taken the construction process being more important. I think engineering contracts cargo don't really matter how we get there. As long as at the end of the day, we've built what we need. Does what we need the Ronseal effect, I tend to call it what it says on the tin.

Dave Barr  32:02

Alright, brilliant, great way to end that's been fascinating. Have you got any more books in the pipeline? Any thoughts coming up new things?

32:10

No, I have no plans for any more books. I'm booked out, shall we say?

Dave Barr  32:16

Fantastic. Well, I encourage everybody to have a look on Amazon and download your books and check out your website. extremely fascinating. I wish there were more legal people taking this approach. Now I can say is thank you very much for sharing this wonderful information today and for being on the show. 

Sarah Fox  32:31

You're welcome. It's been a pleasure. 

Dave Barr  32:33

Thanks. So there's another Real Life Buyer podcast. I do hope you enjoyed it. And it has given you some ideas and inspiration for greater action and achievement. Don't forget to subscribe so you don't miss out on future episodes. And a five star review will be most appreciated. If you would like to discover more about me what I do. Take a look at www.thereallifebuyer.co.uk Bye.