Using two different general contractors for different portions of a renovation
We are renovating an apartment which requires some significant steel structural work. All work with be permitted.
After getting some bids from general contractors for the full job, the quotes for the structural portion of the work vary greatly ($30k in difference) even though everyone is looking at the same plans and the structural details are very clearly laid out. However, those contractors with lower structural costs are then much higher priced for other portions of the job.
So we’re considering having one contractor pull the permit, do the structural work, rescind the permit and then have another contractor pull the permit to do the rest of the work. Has anyone done anything like this?
If the prices were close, we’d obviously prefer to have one contractor just do it all but $30k in difference is substantial.
We will also discuss this with our architect but wanted to see if anyone had done their renovation like this and if you had any issues other than it likely taking more time and coordination.
Thanks for any advice.
stickerhappy
in Renovation 7 years and 8 months ago
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jsa | 7 years and 8 months ago
I would speak to the contractor who had good prices on everything else but was just high on the structural steel. Tell him that the other bids had a lower number for that work. Ask him if he has any other steel subcontractors that he works with that he could get a price from. Some GC’s may only want to work with their regular subs, but some might not mind working with someone else for a portion of the work if it helps them get the job. I do not recommend hiring 2 separate GC’s.
Lurker | 7 years and 8 months ago
Just to chime in, structural work often requires so-called special inspections, which add to your overall cost, and if your GC doesn’t really know what they are doing with such things they may be a major hindrance in passing inspections and thus take longer to finish the work and cost more.
agdipierro
in Renovation 7 years and 8 months ago
In reviewing a GC’s bid keep your eye on the overall price. Line item pricing, which can be helpful, has its own issues since many contractor’s pad their subcontractor’s pricing while others don’t .
CarmenR | 7 years and 8 months ago
I don’t know the scope of your project, but the $30k amortized over the entire time you’re living in the property is probably a drop in the bucket compared to how much time and headache you’re doing to deal with trying to manage this. I’d try to find a better contractor who you trust. We went through this same bidding nightmare (bids coming in wildly different for the same scope) and were feeling like we were being taken advantage of until we found the contractor we ended up using. Their bid was on the high end (although not the highest) of those which we got, however their communication was great and they could explain the cost of every line item. No way would I try to manage a project with two different GCs unless it was my fulltime job.
slopefarm | 7 years and 8 months ago
You don’t necessarily know that you are overpaying. You have two contractors that bid on a broad scope of work and placed different values on different parts, but I suspect that the key number is the total bid. You might get different prices if you went back and asked each what the price would be for just the component you want them to do. You don’t know what they are thinking about work order, labor, and the like. Are the overall bids comparable in price?
Since you are doing structural work, it is really important that you start out with a good feeling about the contractor and the commitment to doing things the right way. There is also the value in having one contractor own the job, so that if there is a problem down the road, you don;t run into a stalemate of finger-pointing where neither thinks it is his responsibility to fix it. Pick the contractor you prefer and then ask about the discrepancy in whatever area that bid is high, and ask if he can do a little better on the price for that part of the job.
zlapqtorekgljwxy | 7 years and 8 months ago
This type of bidder discrepancy seems really common these days. Hard to really know exactly what’s going on without more details but I’m going to agree with CarmenR and resident2, I would not do this. “Some inconvenience” is an optimistic view of going through the permitting process twice on one job. Your cost for the architect would be higher (because the length of the job is longer and he/she would have two generate two separate sets of filed drawings), expediter fees would double, and there’s no guarantee that the prices you get now for the non-structural work will still be honored once you actually get to that portion of the work.
stickerhappy | 7 years and 8 months ago
CarmenR, I get that it might make things trickier and take more time but overpaying by $30k sounds like kind of a nightmare too. Like I said, if the bids were in the same ballpark I’d gladly go with one contractor but saving that much might be worth some inconvenience.
stickerhappy | 7 years and 8 months ago
Resident2, why not?
resident2 | 7 years and 8 months ago
No contractor that knew what they were doing would agree to this.
CarmenR | 7 years and 8 months ago
This sounds like a nightmare. I would not do this.