Some readers may have noticed this Construction Lien Blog underwent a design overhaul two or three weeks ago. We let it go without mentioning, as it was just a first step toward this complete overhaul. The blog’s new design now matches Zlien’s website, as we went live with the redesign over the weekend.

Although there are significant design enhancements with the new site design, I consider these two as the most significant improvements:

Mechanics Lien & Preliminary Notice Resources

When we set out to redesign the Zlien website, creating a more organized and user-friendly mechanics’s lien resource center was our top priority, and we believe we successfully redesigned this element of our offerings.

Now, the user can click on a state, and be brought to that state’s homepage for lien and notice resources.  All resources, whether it be deadline charts, state projects, private projects, statutes or forms, are all easily accessible from one spot online.  Plus, we even pump our mechanic’s lien law alerts from this blog onto the state’s homepage.

In addition to the design enhancements, we also have content enhancements.  There are more mechanic lien law and preliminary notice requirements published on the Zlien website than ever before, and we’ve got the web’s most extensive mechanic’s lien and preliminary notice forms database.  The best part about all of these forms?  They’re organized, easy to find, and free.

The Fastest, Smartest and Easiest Ordering System On The Planet

Although our Mechanic’s Lien Ordering System was the best and most sophisticated on the planet, we thought it could be even better. Now, it is.

We’ve improved our progress bar, so that instead of seeing a generic colored bar, you can see each step that is required to complete your order and just how much further you have left to fill out.  We’ve completely re-designed our order contact management system, making it more intuitive and easy to add project contacts to your order.  We’ve utilized APIs to match zip codes, cities, states and counties to ensure order accuracy. And finally, we’ve just made the dang thing look prettier.

If your company needs to deliver a preliminary notice, or file a mechanic’s lien or bond claim, there isn’t a faster, easier or more accurate way to get this done.  The Zlien Filing Wizard is the best on the planet, and you can give it a shot here: Order A Mechanic’s Lien Now.

Whenever an order is placed with Zlien, the client gets system generated emails that lead them through the order’s process.  Our clients complained that these emails were a bit text heavy and confusing. All the information was there, but the user wasn’t able to take a single glance at the email and know what was going on with their order.  We listened.

We know our clients are busy, and want something easy on the eyes.  Can we communicate everything about their order with just a two second glance?

Now, we think so.

Take a look at the new email format:

An easy to read graphical progress bar shows clients instantly their order’s progress. Beneath it, in yellow, a link is provided for easy and immediate access to the order’s documents. The document link is transmitted to the client securely by email, and no login is required.

Then, if the client wants more information about the order’s progress, that information is provided below.

Thanks to all of our clients for their feedback. We’re executed about the launch of this minor, yet important, update to our service.

Top 4 Mechanic Lien Law Challenges For Material Suppliers
More than any other construction participant, complying with mechanic lien and bond claim laws is most burdensome for building material suppliers. This post examines the lien and notice challenges specific to those in the building material supply business.

Should Material Suppliers Wait Until An Account Is Overdue Before Sending Preliminary Notice?
Since material suppliers furnish to so many projects, they often inquire if there’s an easy strategy to sending preliminary notices:  just send it when the account is overdue.  The approach has problems, because by the time an account is overdue, preliminary notice is frequently too late. This post examines when this may work, and when it won’t.

Special Mechanic Lien Rules for Specially Fabricated Materials
When materials are fabricated specifically for a job, the manufacturer or supplier may be interested in filing a mechanics lien even if the materials are never actually incorporated into the project (i.e. the order is cancelled).  While liens are generally not allowed for materials not used in a project, this post examines why specially fabricated materials are frequently an exception to this rule.

Suppliers to Suppliers Usually Can’t File A Mechanics Lien
In a world where there are few universal rules, the rule that suppliers to suppliers cannot file a mechanics lien is pretty universal. When supplying to a prime contractor, a subcontractor, or just about anyone who furnishes some type of service other than the strict delivery of materials, the supplying party has mechanic lien rights.  If furnishing materials to someone else who just furnishes materials, however, laws consider the supplier’s supplier as too far removed to qualify. This post examines why, and how prevalent the rule actually is.

The Material Suppliers Guide To Creating A Mechanic’s Lien Policy
The mechanics lien is really just a credit and collections tool, and just like companies need a credit / collections policy, they also need what we’ve termed a “mechanics lien policy.”  This post defines the concept of a mechanics lien policy, and discusses the things to contemplate when constructing such a policy so that the material supply company consistently protects and perfects its mechanic lien rights.

How Material Suppliers Prove Its Materials Were Incorporated Into The Property When Filing A Lien
Material suppliers only qualify to file a mechanics lien if their materials were incorporated into the project (except for specially fabricated materials, see above). That begs the question: how does one prove its materials were actually incorporated into the jobsite.  This post examines how courts address this issue, and what a material supplier needs to do to ensure it can meet its burden.

How Zlien Can Help Material Suppliers
The Supplier Series posts conclude with an article about how a mechanics lien and preliminary notice service like Zlien can help material supply companies and materialmen with the challenges and issues discussed in the preceding posts.  This post actually refers back to the first post (about material supplier challenges), and discusses how Zlien can help with each one.

A special thanks to Christopher Hill and his recommended Construction Law Musings blog, for letting me post for a record 5th time as part of his Guest Post Friday series. I love his construction law blog. He’s been blogging about construction law matters in Virginia for a few years, and he brings an unique voice to the construction law conversation out there on the Internets.

While I’ve focused on immigration issues my past submissions, this time, I wrote an article outlining the life of a mechanics lien claim: The Life Of A Mechanics Lien Claim: Preserve, Perfect, Enforce.

I really like how this post turned out, as it gives a big picture overview to the entire mechanic lien process. Here on this blog, I sometimes get bogged down on the nuances in mechanic lien law, addressing the little things that differ state-to-state.

It’s important to step back sometimes and take a view from above apporach to the liens laws, because while they vary drastically from state to state, there are a lot of underlying principles that are consistent. Understanding these principles can take companies a long way.

In any event, thanks to Chris, and I recommend heading his way to read the article.

For the rest of January, we’re going to run a blog series focusing on how mechanic lien laws affect those in the material supply business. These blog posts will address the challenges material suppliers specifically face when trying to comply with lien and notice statutes across the country, and answer from frequently asked questions and frequently encounter scenarios in the mechanics lien context.

Material suppliers are present on virtually every construction project, but what’s really interesting about them in the mechanics lien context is that they aren’t actually present at all. They usually supply materials from afar, never stepping foot on any project jobsite. They presume (and the law presumes) that their materials are incorporated into the improvement where delivered, and are usually supplying to a pretty high volume of projects at any given time.

For these reasons, mechanic lien laws in each state pay special attention to material suppliers. While the property owner can pass by a project jobsite and gauge how many subcontractors or laborers are working and what they’re doing, it’s much more difficult for the property owner to keep track of where all of the building materials originate.  The result is that material suppliers have high compliance requirements to preserve, perfect and enforce their lien or bond rights.

I’m very excited about this January series of posts for material suppliers. To prepare for the series, I went through our archive and was disappointed about the lack of content available to material suppliers. These posts will change that for the better.

If you’d like to read the Material Supplier content on this blog, view posts with the Material Supplier Tag (RSS).  And, of course, stay tuned this month.

To assemble this list, I looked at the site’s analytics for the past year, and pulled the ten most viewed posts.  Posts from later in the year didn’t get a fair shake because they weren’t up as long to accumulate the visit count, so I excluded the bottom three general posts and substituted them with the most popular from the final quarter of the year.  Here goes:

1. California Lien Law Changes Effective January 1, 2011 — Are You Ready?
2. 5 Things To Know About The Miller Act
3. Summary of 2011 New Jersey Construction Lien Law Changes
4. California Lien Law Forms, Procedures & Laws Changing on January 1, 2011
5. What Happens After You File A Mechanic’s Lien?
6. How to Prepare for a Non-Paying Project
7. How To File A Mechanic’s Lien: A Comprehensive Overview That Applies To Any State
8. How Long Will A Mechanics Lien Cause Havoc?  Not Very
9. How To File A California Mechanics Lien
10. Everything You Need To Know About Mechanic Liens

Thanks to all my readers for their support and patronage in 2011.  I look forward to a great 2012, and wish you a happy new year.

Zlien is fully functional again, and back to helping clients across the county file mechanic liens and preliminary notices.  Thanks for your patience, and hope everyone had a great holiday.

Here’s a screenshot of this new feature in work within the LienWizard:

Knowing the construction project’s county is critically important to mechanic lien filings, as most states require you to file your mechanic’s lien in the county where the project is located. By verifying the county against the project’s zip code, this new feature is another way Zlien can help you Lien Smart.

The multiple screen flow here was unnecessary, and you can now add a project contact without ever leaving the contact page. When you press the “Add Contact” button, the contact fields appear.

While this is a subtle change, it really makes a difference in the usability of this page, and if you’re inputting a lot of contacts it can save a lot of time. Here’s a screenshot of how this feature looks now:

The Lien Pilot has helped contractors and suppliers across the country calculate mechanic lien and preliminary notice deadlines for easy lien compliance.  That powerful database has been condensed into a widget that calculates mechanic lien and preliminary notice deadlines in seconds, with just the project’s basic information.

Users of the widget can add the mechanic lien deadlines to their desktop calendar (i.e. Outlook), can have them emailed, or can sign up for a free account to track them through the Lien Pilot.

Website and blog owners with a construction audience can add the Widget to their website with just a few lines of code:

Use of the widget is free to website and blog owners, and to web visitors.

Scott Wolfe Jr., a construction attorney and founder of Zlien is excited about the release of this Widget and other partnership opportunities with construction-oriented websites and services:

We want to make it easy and free for those with construction-related websites to offer a powerful service to their visitors.   This widget is interactive and simple to use, and it helps visitors address the difficult task of mechanic lien compliance.

The Lien Pilot is a product of zlien.  It’s a web-based application the helps contractors and suppliers manage their mechanic lien and notice requirements and deadlines.   Users are notified of upcoming deadlines by email, RSS Feed, or by exporting the deadlines to a desktop calendar like Microsoft Outlook.

When something is due, the contractor or supplier can prepare the document themselves, or they can order it from zlien with the click of a button.   Zlien prepares and files mechanics liens, preliminary notices, bond claims and more for contractors and suppliers across the country.

Try it here:

Use of the Widget is subject to zlien’s Terms of Use.