Briefing · no. 01
Keeping the trades in-house
Why a construction holding chooses not to buy in what it already knows how to do
The question investors ask most often is not about revenue: it is why a group this size keeps crews, plant and works supervision in-house instead of subcontracting everything and staying light.
The answer is about time, not cost
Subcontracting everything makes the balance sheet leaner and the risk more opaque. Whoever subcontracts every work package is not buying a price: they are buying somebody else’s availability in a given week. When that week slips, the handover slips, and with it the numbers promised to whoever put up the capital.
Keeping the skills in-house means the company itself decides where to send the crew on Monday morning. It costs more in overhead and it shows: but it is the reason scaffolding goes up when it is needed rather than when it happens to be free, and a roof is closed before the rains instead of after.
There is a second consequence, less visible and just as concrete: people stay. A site manager who always works for the same company knows the suppliers, the inspectors, the municipal technical offices. That knowledge is in no contract and cannot be bought on the market: it accumulates, and it is lost if the crews change with every job.
What to look at, if you are assessing the group from outside
Not the number of sites, but how many were handed over within the stated time. Not one year’s revenue, but how much of the work was done by in-house crews. Those are the two numbers that say whether a construction company is an industrial machine or an office passing orders along.