A client put two quotations side by side and asked which one was cheaper. Neither of us could answer that from the cover page. Here is how we cost a sewage treatment plant per cubic metre treated, what sits inside that number, and where capital money buys running money back.
A client read me his STP contract over the phone the week before he signed it: two pages, a list of tanks, and 90 per cent of the money paid before the plant ever saw sewage. These are the four plain-language questions I would ask before signing — none of them about equipment.
