Bid-Build
Despite the substantial advantages of speed, quality and cost of both Design Build and Construction Management, the Competitive Bid process, or Bid-Build, is still utilized as an approach for turning customer plans into reality. Schwob Building Company employs one the strongest estimating departments in the industry, utilizing state of the art software and subcontractor relationships that have been developed over the past 30 years.
Although the quality and speed of the Bid-Build approach is generally less, this may be the ideological construction approach within your organization. If so, few contractors can compete dollar for dollar with Schwob Building Company. We may not always be the lowest, but we will always be competitive, employing the strongest management and offering the best value engineering. Put our estimating department to the bid-build test – if your organizations respects firms with great value added ideas, we would be happy to bid your next project.
A Few Things to Consider on Your Next Bidding Project:
- Pre-Qualify the Bidding Contractors - First call and check references to short list contractors.
- Interview each firm prior to the bid (meet project personnel, discuss project type experience, discuss warranty process).
- Request Financials – Do not put a $15M/year firm on a $15M project – Even if they say they can bond it.
- Putting an unqualified firm on the bid list deters the good contractors – Project destined to fail.
- A Maximum of Three (3) Pre-Qualified firms provide “Perfect Competition”.
- More than three (3) Pre-Qualified firms reduce subcontractor interest, providing less competitive pricing for you project.
- During the bid process, find out who is asking the questions – contractors that do not ask questions create the questions and problems during the construction process, costing your project time and money.
- Avoid conflicts of interest by requesting the receipt of bids to your office – not your architect/engineers. Review the bids with your architect at your office – tabulate together.
- Review the proposed construction timeframe – do not make a decision simply on low price. Find out how they developed this timeframe – was it pulled out of the air or can they support it immediately with a preliminary written schedule that was reviewed prior to bidding your project.
- Conduct a post bid interview with each contractor – you may learn about many of the design issues and concerns prior to construction. Request contractor concerns during this interview – find out how they feel about the project, their price and the quality of bidding subcontractors.
- Request value engineering ideas – respect and keep in confidence each firms ideas until a final decision has been made. You paid for the design but are getting the cost saving ideas for free – be respectful.
- After the post bid interview, select a firm. Work with them to determine your final pricing so that they may commence with planning and subcontractor selection, locking in material pricing before it increases.
- Don’t run every firm thru multiple pricing exercises as it almost always has an adverse affect on your project. This takes time and almost always increases costs, deterring each firm’s interest and confidence towards the project.
There will always be contractors who can build a little worse and promise a little cheaper and those who only consider price are their lawful prey. Select your next contracting firm based on qualifications…low bid selection simply costs too much.
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