Who carries the float?

This is probably the biggest debate in the industry. Because money in construction doesn't flow but it cascades. On a large project, four or five tiers can sit between the client and the smallest supplier, and at every level the payment can be delayed, withheld or retained, usually because the firm holding it is using it as free credit [1][2]. I am afraid this is not by error but it is the working capital model of the firms at the top, paid for by the firms at the bottom.

The numbers behind that model are stark. Research by UK accountancy firm Menzies found 93% of construction businesses report late payment, with invoices averaging 53 days overdue, and 86% already in or at risk of serious financial distress [1][2]. Construction has topped the UK insolvency table for four consecutive years: 4,450 firms failed in 2025, up 9%, and another 1,180 followed in the first quarter of 2026 alone [2]. When a big link in the chain fails, the damage below it is enormous. The collapse of ISG in 2024 left more than £1.1bn in unpaid debts, with hundreds of subcontractors out of pocket for work already completed [2].

The current protection was built for the top of the chain

Project Bank Accounts ring-fence client money so it cannot be swept into a contractor's general pot. This was a real reform, and it stoped the worst abuse. But as Phil Brown, founder and executive chair of Causeway Technologies and an investor in Saible, put it when Saible's investment round was announced: "Project Bank Accounts recognised the right problem, but they were never built to protect payment all the way down the supply chain" [1]. In practice, as Financial IT reports, the lower tiers often sit outside the ring-fence, and the cascade below it continues [2]. Anyone who has chased a debt from three tiers down knows the arithmetic: adjudication costs more than the invoice, so the invoice waits.

Changing the geometry

A Birmingham fintech called Saible has now raised £2.9m to attack the geometry itself [1][2]. The investment round, reported by FinTech Global in July, combines £2.1m previously raised with a fresh £800,000 angel round and a £50,000 Crowdcube allocation that let smaller construction firms invest alongside the angels [1]. Its product, the Digital Parallel Payment Account (DiPPA), holds project funds in trust with Griffin, a regulated bank, while Saible supplies the approvals, verification and audit layer around the account [1][2]. When a payment is approved, money goes out to approved firms across every tier at the same moment. Nobody below waits on the firm above them to pass it along [1]. The project owner pays a 0.25% fee on payment value. The supply chain pays nothing [1].

The first live test is public sector: a £1.5m to £2m footbridge replacement with the Environment Agency and BAM Nuttall, started in summer 2026 and running 12 to 16 months, with a Cabinet Office-sponsored group on construction payment sitting behind the pilot's design [1].

The float doesn't disappear. It moves.

Here is the part I dont think the press releases articulated. Simultaneous release doesn't create money. It just moves the float.

Under the cascade model, the project is quietly financed by the weakest parties in the chain. The subcontractor waiting 53 days is extending interest-free credit to everyone above them. Wheras under a trust model, the client's money leaves earlier and sits in the account, and every tier draws at once. The free credit the top of the chain has been extracting disappears, and it has to land somewhere: either the client carries the float, or margins shrink to cover real financing, or the 0.25% fee stands as the honest, visible price of trust replacing extracted credit.

Adoption is the whole game

That is why the test ahead is not technical. It is whether the parties who decide how a project gets paid, the clients and main contractors, will opt into a structure that takes the float away from them. The public sector pilot makes sense on those terms: the Environment Agency has policy reasons to want its supply chain paid, and procurement can force what the market will not volunteer [1]. Private clients face simpler but similar calculation. The Construction Playbook and late-payment legislation are nudging, but free supplier credit still sits on the other side of the ledger, and nudging is not compulsion [2].

The insolvency numbers say the bottom of the chain cannot keep carrying this float. Saible's model says the float can move. The question the footbridge pilot begins to answer is whether the firms holding it today will ever see a regulated trust as protection for the industry, or as an attack on their own working capital.

Sources

[1] FinTech Global — "Saible raises £2.9m to protect UK construction payments" (Jul 15, 2026)

[2] Financial IT — "Saible, the Construction Payments Fintech, Raises £2.9M to Protect Supply-Chain Payments Across UK Building Projects" (Jul 2026)