We provide Business Advisory, Legal Services (Construction Law & Commercial Law) and Construction Business Improvement Services to businesses in Brisbane, Queensland and Australia.
Get help stabilising, improving and scaling your $5M to $200M construction businesses with practical integrated business, legal, commercial, risk, structural, governance and financial support for construction, civil and infrastructure business owners and decision-makers.
Call Rachelle Hare and Shannon Drew direct on (07) 3063 3373 to chat about your business and how we can help.
We’re also a Construction & Commercial Law Firm, and Rachelle can help you with most Legal issues that come up in your business, including advising on, drafting, reviewing and negotiating any Construction and Commercial Contracts.
Don’t know where to start? Can’t put your finger on what’s going wrong in your business? We don’t judge. We own bricks & mortar businesses ourselves, we’ve been there. And we’re experts at diagnosing specific issues and their causes. Worth 15 mins of your time?
Chad Kemp, Credit Advisor Director at New Horizon Financial interviews Shannon Drew our Management Accountant, Business Adviser & Virtual CFO at Blaze Business & Legal, on the Allies on Pursuit podcast.
There are a number of key insights in this podcast, including:
Rachelle and Shannon work closely together to advise on your business, come up with solutions to the problems you’re having, help you grow or scale, and help resolve the specific issues in front of you.
We are one of the few truly integrated Business Advisory and Commercial Law Firms in Australia, particularly advising Contractors, Subcontractors, Trade Contractors, Suppliers and Service Providers in the Construction Industry in Brisbane, Queensland and Australia. And we’re one of the only specialist Construction Business Improvement consultants in Australia.
Rachelle is our Senior Construction Lawyer and Commercial Lawyer. She reviews, drafts and negotiates your Construction Contracts, Subcontracts, supply agreements and Commercial Contracts, and she advises you on the legal questions that come up while you’re running projects and operating your business.
We quote most legal work at a fixed price and agree the fee with you before we start. Where we can’t scope it up front, Rachelle agrees the basis for the fee with you first, and she will give you additional fixed fee quotes as soon as the scope of future tasks can be defined.
Rachelle works with you personally, and you’re never handed off to a junior.
We provide advice and strategies for your business to work with, both short-term and long-term. More than that, we roll up our sleeves and help you implement those strategies, using all the unique skillsets we both have developed over 50+ years working in the Construction Industry, advising businesses and owning our own bricks-and-mortar businesses.
Most business consultants only advise or make recommendations
If you are short on time or need help putting our recommended solutions in place within your business, we’re the people for you. We work closely with you so you always remain in control while feeling supported, with that weight easing off your shoulders.
You deal with the two of us the whole way through. We don’t have juniors and we don’t hand your work to anyone else.
Construction Lawyer, Commercial Manager and Business Adviser
Rachelle started Blaze Business & Legal with Shannon in July 2021, and she runs the law firm inside it on her own.
She has 25+ years as a front-end Construction Lawyer in top-tier law firms, plus in-house roles at major Construction Contractors and Commonwealth clients, acting as General Counsel at Thiess and at Defence Housing Australia, with CASG and AGS. She also spent six years full-time as a Commercial Manager.
She’s been employed at McCullough Robertson, Corrs Chambers Westgarth, Meyer Vandenberg and the Australian Government Solicitor. Through Blaze Business & Legal she’s acted as Senior Legal Counsel for Golding, UGL and Acciona, and as Commercial Manager for CASG and Defence.
Rachelle reviews, drafts and negotiates your contracts, and she advises you on procurement, claims, compliance, governance, Risk Management and business structure.
Full profile, Rachelle Hare
Management Accountant, Fractional CFO and Business Adviser
Shannon has 25+ years in construction, working inside businesses from small trade contractors right up to large head contractors.
He puts in the project level reporting that shows you which jobs are making money and which ones aren’t. He forecasts your cash, works through your overhead recovery and your pricing, and he’ll show you where your margin is going before you price the next job.
Shannon acts as Virtual CFO on a retainer where you want that capability without putting on a full-time executive. He also works on WIP reporting, budget against actual, cost to complete and financial modelling.
He works with residential and trade contractors, commercial builders, and civil and infrastructure contractors across Queensland and around Australia.
Full profile, Shannon DrewCombined, we have the skillsets of 16 different key business roles, built up over 25+ years each working inside and advising businesses in the Construction Industry and most other industries in Australia.
We look at your business from our different perspectives and work out the best way to help you move forwards. Check out our HTML Sitemap for some of these links.
We started Blaze Business & Legal together in July 2021. Between us we’d spent 25 years each in the Construction Industry, advising businesses, working inside them and owning our own bricks-and-mortar businesses, and we kept seeing the same thing.
Owners were paying for good advice they couldn’t use. You’d get your head contract reviewed and hear nothing about what the payment terms were going to do to your bank account in month five. Your accountant would give you accurate accounts every month without realising that your team had missed a notice and your business was now time-barred on a $1.5M Variation claim.
We built Blaze Business & Legal so you can get both from the same firm. Rachelle keeps her law firm separate inside Blaze Business & Legal, and you can engage her for Business Advisory, Commercial Services, Construction Business Improvement Services, Governance Services, Compliance Services, and front-end Legal Services.
We work with Construction Business Owners, Executives and Boards of construction, civil and infrastructure businesses turning over $5M to $100M+. Our clients build residential and commercial projects, they do civil and infrastructure work, they work in mining services and Defence, and plenty of them are specialist trade contractors.
We also work with a number of business clients who are not in the Construction Industry or related industries.
Rachelle works with those owners as a Commercial Lawyer, Contract Manager, Commercial Manager, Governance Adviser, Risk Management Adviser and Compliance Adviser, and she performs the role of External General Counsel, exactly as she does for our Construction Business clients.
Shannon works with those owners as a Business Adviser, Commercial Adviser and Management Accountant, and he performs the role of Virtual CFO, exactly as he does for our Construction Business clients.
So give us a call and tell us what’s going on in your business. We’ll let you know straight away if we can help, and you’ll be surprised how broad our expertise and business knowledge is.
Most owners come to us at one of three points.
You built the business on revenue, and your structure, your contracting, your reporting and your governance never caught up. You know something isn’t right and you can’t put your finger on it yet.
You’re as busy as ever, your cash is tighter than it should be, and your personal guarantees have built up over the years. You’re across the whole business, so nothing gets your full attention.
You’re chasing bigger work, you’re getting ready to bid for Brisbane 2032, or you’re preparing the business to sell or hand over. You need your structure, your contracts, your governance and your reporting right before you commit.
Below about $30M you’re usually the owner, you’re in the office or on site most days, and you make the decision. Above that a Managing Director or a Board decides, often after a CFO or a Contracts Manager has read everything first.
We had a lawyer and we had an accountant, and neither of them had ever spoken to the other. Rachelle found two clauses in our head contract that were costing us money on the job we were already running, and Shannon showed us we were still recovering overhead on that job that we stopped paying two years ago. Both were sorted inside a month, and they came over to Ipswich twice to work through it with our team so they knew what not to do next time. It’s the first time anyone has looked at our contracts and our margins and overheads in the same discussion.R. T. Owner, civil and earthworks contractor, Brisbane and Ipswich
We’ve both spent our careers working inside Construction Businesses and advising on all the issues that affect them. We base our advice on our own experiences with our clients, the companies we’ve worked in, and our own brick-and-mortar businesses.
Our advice is practical and commercial, and we’re always looking at why you would make a decision and what your business goals are. We are Business Advisers first, rather than just advising from a “pure legal” or a “narrow financial or business” perspective.
I spent six years as a Commercial Manager, running the commercial function alongside Project Managers and Site Engineers. I drafted Variation claims and had them knocked back, and then I had to find another way to get my client paid.
So when you ask me whether a Variation notice will hold up, I’m already thinking about how the commercial team on the other side will read it, what they’ve been told about the job, and what they’ll do with the claim when it lands. I’ll give you an answer you can use that week.
When an owner tells me the business is flat out but the bank account never moves, I go to the job costing before I go anywhere near the profit and loss.
I regularly find overhead rates that were set three or four years ago and never looked at again. Every job priced since has been missing the costs the business picked up along the way, and none of them account for its true operational overheads. By the time you feel it, you’ve usually delivered a full year of work at the wrong price.
I’d rather put the right number in front of you before your next tender goes out.
Our offices are at Suite 8, Level 7, 154 Melbourne Street, South Brisbane QLD 4101. But we usually come to your business or meet you on Teams, and we travel to meet clients in person throughout Brisbane, the Sunshine Coast, the Gold Coast, Logan, Ipswich, Toowoomba and all around Australia.
We’re happy to fly down to your offices and spend a few days or a week on the ground, and we often drive to our clients’ sites in South-East Queensland.
Give us a call on (07) 3063 3373 and tell us what’s going on in your business. We’ll tell you whether we can help and give you a fixed price quote for our fees.
Suite 8, Level 7
154 Melbourne Street
South Brisbane QLD 4101
(07) 3063 3373
enquiry@blazebusinessandlegal.com.au
Monday to Saturday, 6am to 10pm
You can start with us in three different ways. You don’t have to commit to a big program before you know whether we can help.
You spend 60 minutes with Rachelle, with Shannon, or with both of us, depending on what you want to work through.
Bring us the problem and we’ll tell you what to deal with first, what can wait, and what each one is likely to cost you if you leave it alone.
Book a Strategy SessionSend Rachelle the contract or the documents, tell her your role on the Project, your timing and what’s worrying you.
She’ll confirm the scope and quote you a fixed price for most work. You approve the quote and engage Rachelle.
Request a Fixed-Price QuoteWe work through your business and give you the Audit Report, ranked by priority and by what each issue is worth in dollars.
You keep the Audit Report whether or not you go on into our 13-Step Construction Business Improvement System.
If cash flow is tight right now, tell us. We can space our services out over time, and Shannon can help you find additional cash flow so you can ramp up our services when you’re ready.
We give Construction Businesses Business Advisory, Construction Business Improvement and Legal Services from the same two people. Rachelle reviews, drafts and negotiates your contracts and advises you on procurement, claims, compliance, governance, Risk Management and business structure. Shannon puts in your project level reporting, forecasts your cash, works on your overhead recovery and your pricing, and acts as Virtual CFO. We’ll help you put our recommended solutions in place inside your business.
Our clients are Construction Business Owners, Executives and Boards of construction, civil and infrastructure businesses turning over $5M to $100M+, in residential building, commercial construction, civil and infrastructure, mining services, Defence and specialist trade contracting. Most owners come to us after growing faster than their systems, while margins are tightening, or while getting ready to chase bigger work, bid for Brisbane 2032 or sell. We take on clients outside construction from time to time as well.
Rachelle is the only lawyer at Blaze Business & Legal and she does all of our legal work herself. Shannon is a Management Accountant, Fractional CFO and Business Adviser. He doesn’t give legal advice, he doesn’t review your contracts as legal work, and he takes no part in the legal work Rachelle does for you. Any legal advice you get comes from Rachelle alone, under a Costs Agreement and Disclosure Notice from Blaze Business & Legal.
Plenty of our clients only ever work with Rachelle on Construction Law and Commercial Law, and plenty only ever work with Shannon on Financial Management and Business Advisory. If Rachelle sees something in your contract that points to a costing or a cash flow problem, she’ll tell you, and you decide whether to bring Shannon in. We don’t put the other one on your work without asking you first.
Rachelle quotes most legal work at a fixed price and agrees the fee with you before she starts. Where she can’t scope it up front, she’ll agree the basis for the fee with you first. We issue a Costs Agreement and Disclosure Notice, as Queensland Law Society rules require, so your scope, your fees and your deliverables are all documented before anything begins. Rachelle does the work personally and nothing goes to a junior.
We scope Business Advisory work and agree the price with you before we start. The Strategy Session is a fixed fee for 60 minutes with Rachelle, with Shannon, or with both of us. The Construction Business Improvement Audit is a fixed price scoped to the size of your business, and you keep the Audit Report either way. If cash flow is tight, tell us and we’ll space the work out over time.
Our offices are at Suite 8, Level 7, 154 Melbourne Street, South Brisbane QLD 4101, in Brisbane, Queensland. We’d usually rather come to your office or meet you on Teams, and we often drive out to our clients’ sites around South-East Queensland. Give us a call on (07) 3063 3373 or email enquiry@blazebusinessandlegal.com.au to arrange either.
Our clients are spread across Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria, the Australian Capital Territory and the rest of Australia. We’re happy to fly down to your offices and spend a few days or a week on the ground with you. Rachelle has worked on Projects in every major Australian state and territory, and she advises on the law that applies where you’re building.
Our 13-Step Construction Business Improvement System runs over 12 months and covers your cash flow, your business structure and director protection, your contracting strategy, your governance, your commercial and procurement function, your management reporting, your people and organisational structure, your compliance and operating system, your bid strategy and your succession. Step 1 is the Construction Business Improvement Audit, which we deliver as a written Audit Report ranked by priority and by dollar value. You keep the Audit Report whether or not you go on into the System.
Most business consultants only advise or make recommendations. If you’re short on time and you want help putting our recommended solutions in place inside your business, we’re the people for you. We’ll come to your offices, spend a few days or a week on the ground, and work alongside your people. You stay in control the whole way through.
Most owners already know something needs fixing and can’t get to it while they’re running projects, managing staff and keeping revenue coming through the door.
Give us a call and tell us what’s happening. And we’ll tell you how we can help.
Looking for Construction & Commercial Legal Services? Call Rachelle directly on (07) 3063 3373 for legal advice, or request a fixed-price quote
