Put It in Writing: What He Decides Without You

The problem in one breath

You told your foreman to "use his judgment." Now half his calls surprise you, and the other half still ring your phone anyway. Nobody ever wrote down where his authority stops and yours starts — so every gray area lands right back on you.

Why it happens

Delegating without written limits is not delegating — it is guessing. A good foreman does not want to overstep, so he asks. Or he guesses, gets it wrong, and you eat it. Either way you are back in the loop. "Use your judgment" sounds generous, but it quietly hands the decision back to you the moment it actually matters.

The play

Give each foreman three clear buckets, in writing, with real numbers.

1. Split his calls into three buckets, with one foreman at a time.
   • He decides alone — no call needed: surprise repairs under a dollar cap, start, stop or tarp on the roof he's standing on, the crew's sequence up there.
   • He decides and tells you — the "I'm doing it at 2 — unless you say stop" move from Play 1: repairs above the cap up to a bigger line, a material substitution, moving a crew between jobs. He acts unless you say stop.
   • Always yours — never decided without you: anything that changes the price the homeowner signed, any warranty promise, sending someone home or firing them.
2. Write the actual numbers, not "reasonable amounts." A real dollar cap, a real range. Vague limits are the same as no limits.
3. Start the caps low on purpose. A cap he never hits does nothing. A cap he bumps into about once a week is where trust gets built — and you both learn fast where it really belongs. No idea where to start? Put the alone cap somewhere around $300 to $500, and the tells-you-first band up to a couple thousand. Those are starting points, not rules — start lower than feels right, and raise them on the date.
4. Put a raise date on it. Sixty or ninety days out, you sit down and raise the caps he has earned. Trust on a schedule, not on a mood.
5. Both sign it; keep a copy in the truck. It is not a contract, it is a clear line. Next gray area, the sheet answers it instead of your phone.

Fill in one sheet per foreman:

AUTHORITY SHEET — Foreman: ______________   Date: ______

HE DECIDES ALONE (no call needed):
  - Surprise repairs up to $ __________
  - Start / stop / tarp on the roof he's on
  - Crew sequence on the roof
  - _______________________________________

HE DECIDES AND TELLS ME ("I'm doing it unless you say stop"):
  - Surprise repairs from $ ______ up to $ ______
  - Material substitutions
  - Moving a crew between jobs
  - _______________________________________

ALWAYS COMES TO ME (never decided without me):
  - Anything that changes the signed contract price
  - Any warranty promise to a homeowner
  - Sending someone home or firing them
  - _______________________________________

Owner: ______________   Foreman: ______________   Raise caps on: ______ (60-90 days)

Do this this week

Fill in one line: the dollar cap your foreman can spend on a surprise repair without calling you. Write the number, tell him, done. Everything else can follow from that one line.

The tool

authority-sheet.xlsx — a clean, printable authority sheet you fill in and save one per foreman; it flags when a raise date has passed so the review never quietly slips. A Spanish-first version lives on the Spanish cards page for a Spanish-speaking foreman — same sheet, plain jobsite Spanish. See the sheet notes below for how to use and rebuild both.

If your crew is 1099

For a 1099 crew lead this sheet is not a supervision tool — it is a scope-and-contract document, and the wording has to change with it. "Decides alone up to $500" for an employee is delegated authority; for a sub it is a spending and change-order term inside your agreement. Frame the sub's version as what he is authorized to bill or change under the contract, not what you permit him to do as a boss. Keep the language contractual, and have your accountant or lawyer read the sub version before you hand it over — the line between a scope term and bossing a sub around is exactly the line that decides whether he is really a 1099 at all.