When a subcontractor doesn't show up: what to do in the first 48 hours

First, find out which problem this is

There are two kinds of no-show and they look identical on Monday morning.

A one-day problem: a truck broke down, someone's crew got pulled to fix a callback, a foreman quit. Annoying, recoverable, resolved by Wednesday.

A capacity problem: the sub is overcommitted, understaffed, or has quietly deprioritized your job for a better one. This does not resolve on its own, and every week you treat it as a one-day problem is a week you didn't spend solving it.

The diagnostic is a direct question on the phone: how many men are you putting on this job every day next week, and where are they coming from? A one-day problem produces a specific answer. A capacity problem produces reassurance without numbers. Learn to hear the difference — it's the most useful signal you'll get.

The first 48 hours

Day one

Call, don't text. You need tone and you need the chance to ask follow-ups. Texts get answered vaguely.
Get a number and a date. "We'll get guys out there" is not a commitment. "Six men Monday" is.
Record it in the daily report. Who you spoke to, when, and exactly what they committed to. This is the single most important thing you do today, and it takes ninety seconds.
Check the knock-on effects. Who's following this trade? Do you need to warn them now?

Day two

Verify against the commitment. Six promised, two showed — that's a fact worth its own line, with the numbers.
Send a short written confirmation. Not a threat. A record: "Confirming our call Monday — you committed six men starting today. Two on site this morning. Let me know how you're recovering the rest."
Look at the schedule honestly. If this is eating float, you need to know now, not in three weeks.
Consider whether your own notice clock has started. If this delay will affect the owner's date, your contract may require notice within days. See how to write a delay notice.

The trap: handling the first two weeks entirely by phone because you're trying to preserve the relationship. It feels like the mature choice. What it produces is a month of undocumented promises and no record of when you knew — which is the first thing anyone asks when it turns into a claim.

What to write down, exactly

Four data points, every day it continues:

Committed manpower — the number they said, who said it, and when
Actual manpower — the number that showed
Work not performed — specific activities and locations
Downstream impact — who else got held up, and for how long

That's a table, and a month of it is close to unanswerable. A sub can argue about a characterization. They cannot argue with thirty rows of committed-versus-actual with their own foreman's name in the first column.

Escalating without blowing it up

Most PMs escalate too late and then too hard — six weeks of patience followed by a default letter. The subcontractor is genuinely blindsided, gets defensive, and the relationship is gone over a problem that a conversation at week two would have solved.

A workable ladder:

Stage	Action
Days 1–2	Call the foreman. Confirm in writing. Log it.
Days 3–5	Call the owner or principal of the sub, not the foreman. Different conversation, different authority.
Week 2	Written request for a recovery plan with named manpower and dates. Still collaborative in tone.
Week 3+	Formal notice under the subcontract. By now you have three weeks of documentation, so this is a summary of a record rather than an accusation.

Each step is proportionate, and each one is documented. By the time you reach formal notice you're not making a claim, you're stating what's already written down — which is a much harder position to argue with and, oddly, much less likely to be taken personally.

The part people get wrong

Documenting a struggling sub feels like giving up on them. It isn't. The documentation is what lets you be patient — you can afford to give them three more weeks precisely because you have a record if those weeks don't work out.

The PMs who end up in the worst position are the ones who were most generous and least organized: they extended every courtesy, wrote none of it down, and then had nothing to show when the job went sideways and someone had to be responsible for it.

Common questions

What should I do first when a subcontractor doesn't show up?

Call rather than text, and ask specifically how many workers will be on site each day and where they're coming from. A short-term problem produces a specific answer; a capacity problem produces reassurance without numbers. Then log the conversation and the commitment in your daily report the same day.

How do I document a subcontractor's manpower failures?

Record four things daily: manpower committed with who committed it and when, manpower that actually showed, specific work not performed, and downstream impact on other trades. A month of committed-versus-actual entries is far more persuasive than any characterization of the problem.

When should I send formal notice to a subcontractor?

Usually around week three, after a documented escalation from foreman call to principal call to a written request for a recovery plan. Note separately that your own notice obligations to the owner may have a much shorter deadline if the delay affects the project completion date.

Does documenting a subcontractor damage the relationship?

Documenting quietly and consistently generally doesn't — it's the sudden escalation after weeks of undocumented patience that blindsides people. A record also lets you extend more patience, because you can afford the time when you have evidence if it doesn't work out.

What if the subcontractor keeps promising and not delivering?

Escalate one level at a time and put each step in writing: foreman, then principal, then a written request for a recovery plan with named manpower and dates, then formal notice under the subcontract. Check your own notice deadlines to the owner in parallel, since those often run much faster.

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This article is general information for contractors, not legal advice. Construction law and contract terms vary by state and by agreement. Talk to a construction attorney about your specific situation.