You have a construction project, as many companies do, you are going to bid your project to several construction managers and/or general contractors. You want the best and lowest price for your project. Your architect encourages bidding the project as many do. But how do you know the lowest price is the best price? How much time are you investing in bidding and delaying your project construction timetable?
#1: You are spending valuable time and money distributing information to bidding contractors through your architect. Waiting for bids to be returned, reviewed and making a final decision. Your time is money. What if the bids come back “out of budget?” Your architect may need to redesign the project costing you additional money to rework documents and then rebid the project. It makes more sense to bring the contractor in early as part of the team to help with project development and constructability of the architectural documents.
#2: You get hit with change orders during construction costing more money. Why? Many reasons. Due to haste in getting the bid in, the contractor and/or architect did not review drawings for potential errors, site was not inspected thoroughly for unforeseen conditions, lack of information on documents and some GCs find ways to make up for lost profit by taking advantage of you with change orders. This costs you money and delays construction until the change order is resolved. How many change orders can you foresee?
#3: Your project lacks the best means, methods and materials. Since you awarded the project to the lowest bidder, they used the cheapest means to win the project. Your project lacks the quality you paid for. Even though your architect supplied specifications with the drawings, how do you know specifications were followed? Either you pay your architect or a third party to review and observe your contractor or you select a trustworthy contractor for your project.