Get the Best Bang for your Buck on Commercial Building
Posted by Cory Anderson on Fri, Aug 26, 2011 @ 09:30 AM
A building project is a major investment and whether it’s a remodel, addition or new structure, it isn’t unusual for business owners to seek cost cutting options, especially with the cost of materials and supplies trending upward. In this blog, we offer a few tips that can be used to cut the overall costs to your building project.
Since we’re a General Contractor (GC), you likely won’t be surprised that we feel it’s beneficial to bring your GC onto the team as early as possible. While the building is being designed, your GC can provide suggestions toward material selection, applications of those materials, safety needs and square footage and layout tweaks to save on the overall cost of your projects. Once the building design is finished, it’s more likely that you will only spend money rather than save money.
Next, by having your contractor on the team early, they have time to solicit bids for all trades from all subcontractors in your area (or any that you choose) in order to collect a wide variety of bids and find the lowest/best price by the most qualified subcontractors. When multiple GCs are bidding a project just before construction begins, chances are very good that no one GC has all of the lowest/best prices from the subcontractors due to relationships. As a result, no GC has the lowest/best price for the project. Additionally, union GCs typically don’t get the merit shop subcontractor bids due to philosophical issues or contractual obligation. Since 80% of the industry is merit shop, you could be missing out on many of the qualified subcontractor bids that could result in the lowest/best price.
Finally, make sure that you’re GC is insured and run professionally; you can protect yourself from having unexpected costs added to your project. We have heard way too many horror stories about the costly mistakes that have added time to a project, caused liens to be placed on a building, or stopped construction completely.
For more tips on how to save costs on your specific project, contact Michael Shepard for a free consultation.
From Words from Woody (www.wordsfromwoody.com):
“It’s unwise to pay too much, but it’s worse to pay too little. When you pay too much you lose a little money…that’s all. When you pay too little, you sometimes lose everything, because the thing you bought was incapable of doing the thing it was bought to do.”
- John Ruskin (1819 – 1900)