Substitution: the right that has to be real
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Substitution — your company's ability to send a suitably skilled replacement — is one of the three classic status tests. A clause alone has never been enough; tribunals ask whether substitution was genuinely workable in practice.
What weakens a substitution case
- A "reasonable skill and competence" veto so broad the client controls every swap
- No documented example of substitution ever happening in your company's history
- Interview-style selection of you personally (especially CV-first, named-person ads)
- A contract that names you and only you in the schedule
What strengthens it
- Contract wording that puts the obligation on your company to provide the services
- A real example you can point to: a project your company staffed with a second engineer
- Project-based statements of work where the deliverable, not the person, is what's bought
Evidence checklist
Keep: the signed contract, any SOWs, invoices in the company name, and correspondence showing client acceptance of deliverables. Job ads that talk about a team, a resource pool or "one of our partner companies" are far better substitution signals than "we need a Senior PM (you)". Our live board keeps the literal evidence text from every ad so you can judge for yourself.
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More in this cluster: evidence checklist · how we classify · the live board