How To Find A Great Contractor From A Great Contractor

If you are transitioning into the area and have found that "almost" perfect house, finding a contractor to make it perfect can be a daunting task. So I spent some time with the talented Doug Hanna, the H of the well known and successful  S+H Construction, and he generously shared his wisdom. S&H Construction is a 65-person company in Cambridge, MA focusing on residential renovation, new construction, site work, landscaping, energy conservation, renewable energy and waterproofing. They have been in business for 31 years. Doug went beyond his company to talk about what you should know about the contracting business.

The environment for residential construction has changed significantly over the last few years. We are fortunate to be located in Cambridge and the greater Boston area.  The presence of universities, hospitals and high-tech firms has allowed us to weather the recession.  Like most other contractors, we changed our pricing structure to become more competitive. Certainly, things have improved in the last few months since the good weather has come. Still, the market is very competitive. There is no question that contractors have changed their mark-ups and margins. Although prices are edging back up, people who are in the market for a general contractor still stand to get a better deal now than they would have three years ago. Contractors have been forced to look for savings in their estimates; either by lowering mark-ups, bidding out sub-trades to more vendors, or looking at improving efficiency in the way they and their personnel do business.

The contracting market has once again become flooded with all manner of entities calling themselves contractors.  Some of the newcomers to the general contracting game will do good jobs, will stand the test of time and homeowners may realize good value. Some others will vaporize when better opportunities come along. Homeowners should ask themselves a few questions about the company that they consider hiring. 

1. Is the company profitable? Yes, it is important that the people who are working on your home are actually making decent money, in general AND on your project. You want them to have the financial resources to handle problems and setbacks, and you want them to make money on your project so they retain interest, involvement and concern and not just hope to move onto something more profitable. This is one reason why, though you may want to get the deal of the century, it may not be such a great deal.
2. Does the contractor have good references? Of course, he’s only going to give you the “good” references, but what is the overall track record? How long have they been in business? What is the average on customer satisfaction?
3. Even in companies like ours that actually have our own employees, the percentage of work done by subcontractors on a typical renovation project can be 50% to as much as 75% of the job. So does the contractor have good, reliable and trustworthy subcontractors (plumbers, electricians, plasterers, tile people, flooring people, etc) on whom he/she can rely? It takes years to develop relationships with subs, separating the good from the bad, and growing a list of trusted vendors in each sub-trade that will respond because they value a good contractor’s repeat business.
4. Will your contractor give you good advice and will you listen? Better builders look at themselves as being in business, but also as offering a service and wanting to give their customers the best advice possible, even when it’s something they might not want to hear. 
5. Contractor only? Contractor and architect/designer? Design and build? Another place that homeowners may be tempted to save money is with design. On simple, limited projects, it may be fine to eliminate design input. In general though, much as we general contractors hate to admit it, architects and designers do serve an important function (they even come up with some good ideas sometimes!) Though we do have a limited design capacity, we don’t do much design/build. If the design and build is under one roof, who is watching the contractor? Usually that is the function of the architect. We prefer and recommend collaboration between designer and contractor as a team, to produce the best possible project.

In general, our advice is to create a good team: contractor, designer and owner. Come up with a schematic concept for design and ask the contractor to do preliminary “ballpark” pricing. That way you haven’t sunk very much money into design. If the numbers are close to your budget, continue to refine the drawings and ask the contractor to revise the estimate with input from subcontractors. And yes, at some point it would be good to hire the contractor (you have already hired the designer).

There are dozens of good, well-established general contractors in Eastern MA who are ready to help you realize your building or improvement project.

Make sure that your contractor:

- has personnel licensed as construction supervisors.

-has certificates of insurance for general liability and Worker’s Compensation Insurance.

-is trained and observant of the new rules from the EPA regarding disposal and containment of lead paint (known as RRP).

 Also, it couldn’t hurt to walk through a couple of completed projects with contractor candidates to check on quality.