Originally posted by Greg Longshaft
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And our aim has to be to minimise the grey areas as far as possible to reduce any potential liability.
If I'm contracted to bill daily, on say a max 37.5 hours a week, then that's what I aim for. If the end client then wants to apply restrictions ( start 9, end 5:30, mandatory lunch time ), then I'd have misgivings. I'd choose the hours I work to fit in as far as possible with the client to avoid any inconvenience, but other factors apply - ie if it's a longish drive, I like to avoid traffic. If the client site open early in those circumstances, I like to get in early, leave earlier. Given it's almost inevitable that work will involve interacting with permies, it benefits both parties to overlap as much as possible.
Had a situation once when a PM in a client I was working for ranted to the agency - because I wasn't abiding by the core hours permies were contractually obliged to work. Agency then ranted at me. I pointed out I'd fully worked the contracted hours, I'd given the end client additional hours free of charge where I deemed it to be in both parties benefit. Agent then claimed core hours as a mantra, until I asked him to explicitly tell me the contract clause that contained them. End of discussion. As it turned out, other PMs within the same client had no such problem with other contractors doing exactly the same - just this one guy had a stick firmly up his arse. The PM left the client a few weeks later.
If it was a major problem for the end client, then the simple answer I gave to the agent was that the contract would need to be amended to include those core hours, with an adjustment to the rate to reflect inconvenience / potential IR35 liability incurred on my companies side. Which I knew end client and agent would never do, plus I wouldn't have accepted any core hours clause.
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