Four sectors, properly understood.

New build, refurbishment and internal fit-out. This is the broadest of the four, and the one where the brief changes most often between the phone call and the start date.

What we get asked for most is cover at short notice: a trade that has dropped out, a programme that has been pulled forward, or a package that has grown since the original order. That means the useful question is rarely "who is available?" but "who is available, carded for this site, and can actually get there for seven?"

We work to the cards a site requires rather than the cards a CV claims. Full details of our verification process are on the employers page.

Retail, leisure and hospitality fit-out. Shopfitting is a specialised sector, and one that requires a very different set of skills and experience to general construction.

It is a different job. The programme is short and immovable, because the store has an opening date that has already been advertised. Much of the work happens overnight or around trading hours, inside a centre with its own access rules, delivery windows, noise restrictions and permit system. The finish is on show to the public from the first day, so second fix tolerances that would pass on a building site will not pass here.

We ask about the specific environments a candidate has worked in: mall units, high street, concessions inside a department store, bank branches, restaurants, gyms. Those are not the same job either.

Groundworks, drainage, reinforced concrete frames, highways and enabling works. Along with construction, this is our strongest area of expertise, and it is the sector where paperwork is genuinely the job: the wrong card category is not an inconvenience, it is a worker standing at the gate unable to start.

Plant categories are specific and they are checked. A CPCS blue card for one category does not cover another, and a machine sitting idle because the operator is carded for the wrong class costs more in a morning than the labour saved. We confirm the category, not just the card.

The other thing civils demands, more than any other sector, is people who can read a drawing and set out from it. Engineers and gangers who can take levels and keep a gang working to them without being walked round the site every morning.

Mechanical and electrical, from first fix containment through to commissioning and handover. M&E sits at the end of the programme, which means it absorbs every delay that happened before it and still has to hit the same completion date.

Grading matters here more than a job title does. An approved electrician, an electrician and an improver are three different rates and three different levels of supervision, and a client who asks for one and receives another notices in the first week. We put the grade and the card clearly in front of you rather than leaving you to work it out.

At the commissioning end the requirement changes again: testing, certification and the ability to produce the paperwork the building control process actually needs.