Construction Business Improvement, Business Management Consultant & Legal Services in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia | Blaze Business & Legal

Construction Business Improvement is what Blaze Business & Legal does. It covers the legal, commercial, financial, structural, governance, operational and compliance work that decides whether a construction business performs, complies and grows.

Rachelle Hare (Construction Lawyer, Commercial Manager and Business Adviser) and Shannon Drew (Management Accountant, Costs Accountant, Fractional CFO, Commercial Adviser and Business Adviser) work the whole business together rather than handing pieces of the problem to different firms.

Construction cash flow problems usually come from three places. Contracts that allocate payment risk to you. Project delivery practices that miss payment claim time bars and EOT entitlements. An accounts function that runs lagging year-end accounts instead of a live 13-week cash flow forecast.

Fixing them in that order matters. Step 3 of our 13-Step Construction Business Improvement System (Cash Flow Reset and Accounts Function) addresses all three. The Construction Business Improvement Audit (Step 1) identifies which is hurting your business most.

Construction company directors face personal liability across four layers.

Insolvent trading and director duty breaches under the Corporations Act 2001 (Cth). BIF Act 2017 (Qld) Project Trust Account and Retention Trust Account non-compliance which can attract criminal liability.

WHS officer due diligence failures under section 27 of the Work Health and Safety Act 2011 (Qld) which can extend to industrial manslaughter. Personal guarantees signed to banks, suppliers and Principals.

Step 5 of our 13-Step System (Director Protection) addresses all four.

Margin improvement in construction starts with project-level visibility.

Most construction businesses see margin only at year end, by which time underperforming projects have done the damage. Live project-level margin reporting, supported by a working Commercial function tracking variations, EOTs, retention release and payment claim time bars, recovers 2-5% of revenue typically lost in the gaps.

Step 8 (Commercial Function) and Step 9 (Financial Function) of our 13-Step System address both.

The 13-Step Construction Business Improvement System is the 12-month engagement that runs after the Construction Business Improvement Audit.

The 13 steps sequence the legal, commercial, financial, structural, governance, operational and compliance work in the order that fixes the business fastest without breaking the projects you have live.

Step 1 is the Audit. Step 2 is the Audit Report and Triage Plan (both delivered in Month 1). Steps 3 to 13 cover Cash Flow, Business Structure, Director Protection, Contracting Strategy, Governance, Commercial Function, Financial Function, People and Culture, Compliance and WHS, Bid Strategy, and Owner Succession over Months 2 to 12.

The Construction Business Improvement Audit is Step 1 of the 13-Step Construction Business Improvement System.

Four weeks. Fixed price quoted within 2 business days of your application. The price depends on the revenue of your construction business and the complexity of the work, and is confirmed in writing before any work begins.

Rachelle and Shannon go through your construction business across the seven areas, then deliver the Audit Report: a written document with the issues we found, the likely consequences, and how to fix each one in priority order.

Three Audit engagements per month.

Most construction business owners need both. The issue is usually that the two run in sequence across separate firms with a gap in the middle.

A contract issue moves through cash flow. A structural exposure becomes a director liability. A business consultant working without legal input misses the contract layer. A construction lawyer working without commercial-financial input misses the business consequence.

Blaze Business & Legal is one of the only firms in Australia where the Construction Lawyer and the Construction Management Accountant work every engagement together, so the gap doesn't open.

Brisbane 2032 procurement will require contractors to demonstrate financial capacity, contracting maturity, governance, project delivery capability, capability statements, references, insurance and bonding capacity at scale.

Most $5M to $75M construction businesses targeting Tier 2 work for the Games need to lift across multiple areas to qualify.

Step 12 of our 13-Step System (Bid Strategy) addresses this directly, mapped against the procurement frameworks confirmed by the Games delivery authorities.

Personal guarantees can be released, capped, renegotiated or restructured, but rarely walked away from.

The right first step is an audit of every guarantee you've signed, to whom, for how much, and against which underlying obligation. Many construction business owners have signed guarantees they've forgotten about.

Once the position is mapped, individual guarantees can be renegotiated as part of supplier reviews, banking facility renewals, or business structure work. Step 5 of our 13-Step System (Director Protection) addresses this.

AS4000, AS4300, AS2124, AS4902, AS4901, AS4903, ABIC, NEC4, FIDIC (Red, Yellow and Silver Books), GC21, AUSDEFCON, Commonwealth head contracts and state government standard forms. Also bespoke and heavily-amended standard forms.

Rachelle has 25+ years of experience with Construction Contracts across Queensland, New South Wales, the ACT and other jurisdictions, including six years as a Commercial Manager and senior in-house roles at Tier 1, 2 and 3 contractors.

Construction business problems don't sit in one professional discipline. A contract issue moves through cash flow. A structure issue moves through director liability. A compliance gap moves through operational capacity.

Blaze Business & Legal is one of the only firms in Australia where Rachelle Hare (Construction Lawyer, Commercial Manager and Business Adviser) and Shannon Drew (Management Accountant, Costs Accountant, Fractional CFO, Commercial Adviser and Business Adviser) work the legal and commercial-financial sides of the problem on the same engagement.

Most construction businesses currently run that work in sequence across two or three separate firms, which is where issues fall through.

Construction business sale or owner transition requires the business to be sellable before the sale process starts.

That means transferable structure, sale-ready financials, a decoupled owner, documented operations and a credible growth narrative. Most owners discover what's missing during the sale process, by which time it's too late to fix without discounting the price.

Step 13 of our 13-Step System (Owner Succession and Conversion to Ongoing Improvement Retainer) addresses succession planning 12 to 36 months before exit.