Comment by somenameforme

I'm not sure very small scale construction is relevant in this case. I've worked in this exact sort of job before and like you said it's mostly self employed or very near it. And, at least in my case, we literally didn't know a single rule or regulation. It's not like you go grab the hundreds of pages of ever-shifting regulations and memorize them before you start working. And the chances of getting any sort of governmental audit is very near zero.

But in this case you tend to get involved in the work because you enjoy construction and you want to do a good job for the sake of doing a good job. It's like programming. If there weren't external forces, it's not like programmers want to do a haphazard job - but they end up getting pulled in a dozen different directions and, at the end, making code that won't even be formally attributed to them. I suppose one huge difference is also in construction if you do a poor job, you can end up getting sued for everything you own - whereas in code when code crashes, people just shrug.