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This is the post I will be following up on as it progresses! What would YOU do?

The project arrives disguised as exactly the kind of opportunity a growing firm is supposed to pursue: a trusted relationship, a legitimate commercial project, an urgent schedule, and a signed AIA agreement sitting neatly in the file. The client explains that funding is progressing, but the project cannot wait for the lender's machinery to finish turning. Permitting must begin. Consultants must be retained. Drawings must move. Construction pricing must be protected. So we agree to front-load the work, telling ourselves that we are supporting a good client through a temporary timing problem. On paper, we are protected by a contract, suspension rights, and potentially a lien. In reality, none of those instruments make payroll on Friday, and none of them reimburse a consultant who trusted us enough to begin working before the money arrived.

For a small firm like ours, front-loading a project does not mean shifting a few hours between accounting periods. It means placing the full weight of the company behind someone else's promise. We redirect staff from paying work, absorb consultant invoices, accelerate coordination, and carry months of labor because the client says funding is close enough to touch. The team works nights to protect a schedule they did not create, believing I would never ask them to sprint toward a finish line that might not exist. Meanwhile, a quieter possibility begins to surface: the client may never receive the funding, or perhaps they are simply comfortable allowing our firm to finance their progress because the consequences belong to us, not them. The signed agreement is still there. The lien rights are still there. But the work has already been delivered, the salaries have already been paid, and the client has already received the value they needed most: momentum. At the end of the day... I pulled ALL of my savings, ALL of my previous firm 401ks, and ALL of my available credit to finance their project... 

What would you do?! Think about your AIA contracts... what are you allowed to do?! 

Stay tuned for what I did in this 3 part series....