Maintaining the surety relationship requires trust, mutual respect and accountability. These qualities are developed over a long period of time and require open and honest communication. You want to maintain and increase your surety credit. You accomplish this by providing the surety accurate, detailed, and consistent feedback on your business. Over time it will earn you the trust and respect of the surety company. That is vital to the relationship. A Surety company would rather be informed immediately of problems, than see inflated profit and loss statements through percentage-of-completion methods and then seeing that profit margin substantially diminished or even completely evaporated by the time the project is complete.
Sureties can accept problems on a job, they see them every day. They understand that your profit margin may shrink, but when it happens consistently, the surety begins to question your ability to manage your workload, which ultimately affects their willingness to extend surety credit. Once the surety begins to question your ability and honesty, the surety will be very reluctant to increase your surety credit, if they are willing at all. However, when you communicate openly with the surety company, you will gain their respect and confidence. So when you tell them you can increase your capacity, they will believe you and support you. Not just because they trust you, but because the financial results confirm your ability to maintain good margins on the current work program.