And just like magic, the requirements don’t apply to us anymore.

I work on any different sites on different types of equipment. Most visits are for routine service visits for customers with service contracts.

Over the last few years, a lot of sites require us to sign up to various portal sites. So rather than someone on site making sure that we have the necessary qualifications, are insured, and all that. They have an external company do that, for a fee that they expect us to pay for.

There’s a minority of sites where we don’t have to pay for this.

We recently had a customer (a contractor already on a site, so we’d be subcontracting in to do the work) on a site that requires us to be signed up to a certain portal company. That customer has a new requirement that we sign up with a different portal company.

The cost of being signed up with Portal Company 1 was already factored in when we commissioned this system a few years ago, and then continued with the routine maintained.

The cost for Portal Company 2 was significant, ~20% of the overall job. So we quoted this as a line item for the customer’s new service quote for 2023.

Prior to this, they were absolutely insistent that we have to be signed up with Portal Company 2 and just expected us to absorb the cost.

Once they realised that we’d charge them for it, the requirements went away. Funny how that happens.