Leaning On Liens For Payment

Construction and renovation work can sometimes involve multi-layered contractual relationships between the various players in a construction project, where there are numerous complex areas of consideration. An owner or developer may hire a general contractor, who will then contract with subcontractors for various jobs such as carpentry, plumbing, and electrical work. In the same way, subcontractors may hire sub-subcontractors, those sub-subcontractors may hire sub-sub-subcontractors, and so on. This is often referred to as the "construction pyramid". The pyramid dictates not only who works for whom, but also who pays whom: the owner pays the general contractor, who then pays its subcontractors, and who in turn pays the sub-subcontractors, all the way down to the bottom.