Ten ways subcontractors use Alloovium

A subcontract, an amendment, a drawing set — instead of an attachment buried in a thread, the package arrives through Exchangeas a link. Open it and the document previews in the browser with the sender's note beside it, and a saved copy lands in your own workspace — yours to keep and file to the job, regardless of what happens to the email thread it used to live in.

The activity rail shows the provenance from your side too: who sent it, when, and what note came with it — so “which version did they actually send us?” is a lookup, not an argument.

The signature copy arrives for execution; instead of print-sign-scan, you sign it in place. The signature is bound to the exact content you were sent — hash and all — and the signed counterpart goes back on the same timeline the package arrived on.

Both sides now hold the same record: sent, opened, signed, returned, each stamped with who and when. No more “the version I signed didn't have that clause.”

The amended subcontract comes back and it's 42 pages. The old workflow is reading it side-by-side with the last issue and hoping you catch everything. In Alloovium, the paragraph-level diff shows every change between the revisions — the notice period that quietly halved, the new bar on latent conditions, the reissued rates schedule.

You price the contract they actually sent, not the one you remember — and the clause they hoped nobody would read on page 47 is the first thing you see.

When a claim or notice is disputed, the head contractor has a register and you have a sent folder. Exchange puts you on equal footing: everything you send carries a stamped trail — sent, delivered, opened, signed — and everything you receive carries the same.

The next time someone says the notice never arrived, the answer is a timeline entry with a date and a name on it, not a screenshot of your outbox.

The builder invites you to the project and you get one link. It lands you on a page that says who invited you and to what, you accept, and you're in — with access scoped to exactly what your trade needs through the project's groups. No IT ticket, no license audit, no week of onboarding.

From that seat you see the documents you've been given — the current drawings, your subcontract, the specs that govern your work — and nothing you haven't.

Retention, dayworks caps, notice periods, defects liability, set-off rights — the answers are in the subcontract, and the subcontract is 42 pages plus schedules. Ask in plain language: “How many days do I have to notice a delay, and what does the notice have to include?”

The answer comes back cited to the clause, and one tap opens the passage highlighted — so you know your entitlements before you do the work for free, and you quote the contract back with a clause number attached.

Shop drawings, samples, procedures — every submission goes through the Portal with a review status you can see, instead of disappearing into a contract administrator's inbox. When it comes back approved, approved-with-comments, or rejected, the status and the mark-up are on the record.

The transmittal history means you always know what you've submitted, what revision, and what came back — the question “did the builder ever respond to our shop drawings?” has a screen, not a search.

You've hit a detail the drawings don't resolve and the crew is waiting on an answer. Raise the RFI through the Portal: the question, the sheet reference, the photos — logged with a number and a status both sides can see.

The RFI sits on the register until it's answered, not in someone's inbox until it's forgotten — and when the answer affects your price or your program, the record of when you asked is already made.

Directed work happens on the day it happens; the record of it usually happens at claim time. Capture the daywork as it's done — the direction, the crew hours, the plant — and the sheet is dated, structured, and tied to the job from day one.

When the claim goes in, the dayworks item is backed by records the builder's team can open and check — and sending the sheets across for countersignature through Exchange puts the request itself on the stamped record.

Security-of-payment regimes turn on dates: when the claim was made, when the response was due. Send the progress claim through Exchange and the date it went — and the date it was opened — are stamped on a trail both sides hold.

If the response window passes quietly, you're not reconstructing evidence from an email thread; the chronology is already made, in order, with names on it. That's the difference between a claim and a case.