Are you looking to build a house or other type of property? If you have some experience and knowledge in construction, you may well develop the work with people with whom you have worked on different occasions and who are trusted.
But if you do not have experience doing construction work, the chances are that you will end up choosing a construction company to build your property. If that is your case, in this article, we give you ten tips to select and hire a construction company and not die trying. Also, if you are interested in different house designs, truoba.com has a solution for you.
Ten tips when hiring a construction company:
Tip # 1: Negotiate with different people or companies
As in any service that you are about to quote, rule number one is to negotiate with different suppliers that can execute your construction project. Although the main factor here is the price of your services, this is not the only aspect you should evaluate. It is vital that you also consider what training and experience each of them have and what guarantees they can offer you, among other aspects that we will see in the following points.
Tip # 2: Check the job history and references
When you’re choosing who to hire to do a build or remodel, ask prospects about past projects they’ve worked on. Also, ask them if they can give you the contact of someone to ask for references. Having the opinion of previous clients can be your guide when deciding who to hire. Incidentally, this same practice is followed by many private companies before hiring an employee.
Be demanding with the evaluation of the references you receive. It is not enough just that they have completed the work. It is also essential to assess whether previous clients were satisfied with the result of the actions, as well as with the way they worked.
Tip # 3: Pay Attention to the Experience
It may be that what you need is to carry out a simple construction such as building a warehouse with electrical installations and pipes. In such a case, any teacher with some experience can be the right candidate. But if what you need is to do a more specialized job or that involves a more far-reaching intervention, make sure that the people or company you hire have some experience in roles of similar size. Improvisation in the absence of skill can turn into negligence that ends up costing dearly.
Tip # 4: Ensure availability of time or term of the work
If your construction jobs are done by a set of masters led by a foreman, chances are they are dedicated to the construction you hired them for. But if you are working with a construction company, you are likely serving other clients, and that may affect the attention of your work. You can attend to this by agreeing on the hours in which they will work on your construction.
Another way to solve this problem is by setting a deadline for the execution of the work. If you are building minor works with a few masters, it is not worth setting a period. But if you are working with a company, it is good that they agree on a term to finish the construction. In this way, if the objective of your construction project is to exploit the property commercially, this will allow you to plan the commercial operation and its economic evaluation, for example, through the net present value method.
Tip # 5: Evaluate the budget
If you hire a company to build your future property, it is typical for the company itself to give you a budget. In this case, you must demand that the budget be detailed, specifying the cost of materials and labor separately, in addition to the percentage of the profit of the company. If the company you’re listing refuses to provide a detailed quote, discard it.
Either they are incompetent to make a budget, or they intend to deceive or be not very transparent with their costs and the way they operate. Either situation is not desirable. Upon receiving the quote, you should have a simplified calculation of the materials required in the construction so that you can get an idea of the amount necessary is justified or not.
For example, in the game of painting the walls of the future property, you can have an estimate of how much the total surface you are going to paint measures. Thus, knowing how many square meters a gallon of paint yields, you can have a rough estimate of how many gallons it takes to paint the walls of the building under construction and contrast it with the amount of paint detailed in the budget.
Tip # 6: Pay a visit to work in progress
If you are going to hire a company for the jobs, visiting other works they are currently working on is an excellent way to get an idea of how they work and if it is a good idea to contact. When you visit jobs, see if the workplace is kept clean and tidy. Also, check if they take measures and have the necessary equipment to prevent risks, among other aspects. A dirty, sloppy work environment, full of risks around it, can be a sign that the construction itself is carried out sloppily.
Tip # 7: Pay attention to communication
When you are in the quotation and evaluation stage before deciding on your supplier to carry out the construction work, pay attention to how your prospects communicate with you since they will most likely maintain that form of communication with you later. If the way of a notification of a potential supplier does not seem adequate to you, you shouldn’t decide to contract it.
Tip # 8: Drop a Vendor with a Very Low Quote
Although this may sound counterintuitive in the logic of optimizing resources to maximize the profitability of a real estate investment, it is also necessary to know that many times “cheap is expensive.” If you are deciding between different companies and one of them offers a meager price, it may be a sign of desperation on your part to attract clients, perhaps because they did things wrong with other previous clients.
A very low quote leaves the supplier with a small profit margin, which naturally encourages them to save on materials and procedures. These savings, in the long run, can happen to you. For example, if low-quality materials were used, you will have to replace it shortly. Or, the company can save by employing very few people to carry out the works. That will mean longer duration of construction works compared to having done it with another supplier.
Tip # 9: Set the payment schedule
This point is essential when establishing a contract with a construction company. You must agree when and how construction payments will be made. As a client, you will seek to avoid paying most of the budget before starting the work. For its part, the provider will not want to see the entire payment at the end of the work.
Naturally, they must reach an agreement, whereas a client will pay in advance a certain percentage of the budget at the beginning of the work. The remaining payments must be made against the progress of the work.
Tip # 10: Leave everything established by contract
Even if you start working with a trusted provider that you have worked with before, you should not leave anything to the goodwill of the people of faith in humanity. The precise rules and established in writing in a contract will avoid headaches and misunderstandings. Also, they will allow you to defend yourself legally in case breaches harm you by the provider.
Make sure that any agreement is written in the contract: regarding budgets, deadlines, a form of payment, proceed in case of conflicts, etc.
With the above list, you already have ten tips in your pocket so that you can hire a construction company successfully, reducing risks inherent in this process.
We wish you an excellent investment!
Nicola Holder 