Description

Construction contract risk has a direction: downhill, toward the subcontractors and suppliers least equipped to absorb it. This week Robert talks with Kendall Hoyd, founder of FairBuild AI and a 30-year operator across the trades, about the clauses that quietly take companies down. They walk through real horror stories — a $300K final payment and retention vanishing into an indemnity claim, a flooring sub forced to keep installing on a job that had stopped paying — and the false economy of skimping on the drawings budget. Kendall built FairBuild to put plain-English contract analysis in reach of subs who can't keep a lawyer on staff. It's a conversation about parity, leverage, and where the real risk actually lives.

Three takeaways:

• Pay-if-paid and indemnity clauses can be company-ending — and they usually go unread.
• Saving 25% on the drawings budget can cost multiples downstream in rework and change orders.
• The risk sits with whoever doesn't have a lawyer. Change that, and the dynamic changes.

Kendall Hoyd is the founder of FairBuild AI, a contract-intelligence platform built for trade subcontractors and suppliers.

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