'We'll never work with Gee Construction again', vows subbie

A subcontractor has vowed never to work for Gee Construction again, following a lengthy battle to recover the cash it claims it is owed.

Mick Perkins, boss of £3m flooring specialist Hi-Tech made the claim as he revealed that it had taken the threat of court action to claw back £11,000 of the total of £15,000 he says his company has been owed for months across several projects.
 
Hi-Tech's first connection with Gee, which made a pre-tax profit of £1.9m last year, involved a £65,000 subcontract on a new college project in Luton while the two firms also worked together on a Transport for London scheme worth a total of £30,000.

Perkins said that he understood Gee’s payment systems to restrict subcontractors to a weekly window of opportunity (Fridays 12noon-1pm and 2pm-2.30pm) to phone through and see if they have been selected for payment that week.

He claimed: “Gee’s finance director Nigel Rickman and construction director Des McGuckin select which payments to go out.

“We’d been promised our money five or ten times after chasing for it every week. I’m not fearful of them going bust, rather the issue is that the money is sitting in their bank and not ours.”

Perkins wrote to McGuckin on 1 February to express his annoyance at the way the non-payments were being blocked by Gee’s accounts department.

“Considering that we had the order for this project placed with us, then taken from us and saw it awarded to another contractor, only to have the contract re-awarded when it was discovered that the other contractor was not performing, I would have thought Gee Construction would have done what they could to keep us on-side of what must have been an embarrassing situation,” said Perkins in his letter.

“But yet again, for the fourth week running, we find ourselves in the same situation – no money and pathetic answers as to when we will receive payment.”

Hi-Tech was still fighting a losing battle in mid-April, at which point Perkins wrote to both McGuckin and Rickman saying:

“Despite numerous assurances by [your] accounts staff, our payment has failed to turn up today, apparently it wasn’t selected for release.”

Perkins said that after being repeatedly told on Monday mornings that Hi-Tech’s payment was “not selected for release and that it would be considered on the following Friday for release, with no guarantee” he was pushed into instigating court proceedings.

Several calls to McGuckin and Rickman have been made by CJ. None has been returned.