Subcontractor prequalification
Every office runs some version of this. A folder per company, a certificate somebody chased in March, a licence number typed into a spreadsheet, and a standing anxiety about which of them expired while the job was busy. Here the file is the condition of answering your request: a company with a gap in it does not reach your inbox with a price, and it is told what the gap is.
In every trade, without exception
These two are not a list somebody decided was universal. They are what is left when every trade’s requirements are laid over each other, so a trade added tomorrow either files them or this card changes.
What follows on this page is the rest of it: the one credential a trade adds where its state issues one, the form that sits on the money side rather than the work side, and the limits — which are yours and nobody else’s.
The insurance pair
Every company on the platform files general liability and workers’ compensation, whatever it does. Both carry an expiry date and both are read by a person here. What they do not share is their treatment with a credential: insurance gets a renewal window and a credential gets none, and the two rules are the reason a company can be current on one and closed out on the other.
Two rules, and they are not the same rule
A window is not a discount. A company that lets one run out is a company that cannot answer your next request until the policy is back in force.
Plus one credential
On top of the insurance pair, a trade files at most one more document: the licence or certification its own work cannot legally happen without. At most one, and sometimes none, and the difference between those two is worth being exact about rather than smoothing over.
Its own credential
Its own credential
No credential exists
The form that is not about the work
A taxpayer form says nothing about whether a crew is safe on a live floor, so it does not sit with the documents that decide who may price your work. It sits on the money side, collected and read, where a form about payment belongs, kept apart from the list above so a reader never mistakes paperwork about tax for a say in who works on the job.
On the money side
A W-9 is collected and verified in the same review.
The limits
A file that is merely complete proves nothing about whether a company carries enough. The coverage lines below are the ones a figure can be set against, and every figure in the right-hand column belongs to whoever is writing the subcontract.
Yours to fill, per trade
| Coverage | Your figure |
|---|---|
| General liability (per occurrence) | |
| General liability (aggregate) | |
| Workers' comp / employer's liability | |
| Auto liability | |
| Umbrella / excess | |
| Professional liability | |
| Pollution liability | |
| Crime / employee dishonesty |
You set the coverage limits you require, often the number your own insurer or lender asks for. A vendor whose recorded coverage falls below one of them cannot propose on your work until it is raised.
The shortfall
The refusal happens when the company tries to send a proposal, which is before a price exists and long before an award. It carries the line, what the company carries, what you require, and the dollars between them — so the answer is something a broker can act on this week rather than a door that closed without a reason.
The six answers a line can give
Three of these refuse a proposal on a line you marked required. The other three are reported to you and let the company answer.
Insurance and trade credentials verified, expiration dates tracked, and a lapse pauses new proposals and new work.
A complete file is two insurance documents, one credential where the state issues one, and a taxpayer form on the money side. The limits behind it are set by whoever is writing the subcontract, and a company short of one cannot price the work.
Job-site tradesAdditional insured endorsementsHow a request works