How we run a builder's scope

The other guides say what to look for in a sub. This one says what we actually do, so you can hold us to it.

It is easy to write a page about what makes a good subcontractor. It is more useful to say plainly how we work, in the order it happens, so you can check us against it.

We walk it

Ricky comes and looks at the job. Not a photo, not a takeoff off a plan alone if the job is already standing. He prices what he has actually seen, which is why the number tends to hold.

We price the scope as you wrote it

We price what you sent us. If something is missing from it, you hear about that before you get a number, not after the work is done. If we think the scope has a problem in it, we say so then, while it is still cheap to fix.

We put it in writing before anybody starts

Scope, price, and dates, agreed before a stick of work happens. That protects both of us and it is not negotiable on our side.

We show up when we said

If we say Tuesday, we are there Tuesday. If something moves on our end, you hear it from us early, with enough notice to shift a trade, and you never hear it from your client.

The same crew stays on it

A small in house crew, not a rotating list of day labour. The people who start your finish are the people who finish it, which is the only way the work matches itself from the front door to the back bedroom.

Changes get raised before the work, not after

If it is not in what you gave us, we come to you first. You will not get a number at the end of the job that you did not know was coming. That is the single most common way a sub relationship goes bad, and it is entirely avoidable.

We work the punch until it is closed

Not until it is nearly closed. The last ten percent of a finish scope is where most crews drift off to the next job, and it is the part your client actually inspects. We would rather be the crew that is still there on the last day than the one you are chasing.

Then we leave

Your client is your client. We do not hand out cards on your job. We do not follow up with your homeowner afterwards. We are not on your site building a list, and we will not turn up in their inbox six months later.

We say this plainly because it is the thing builders are most wary of, and rightly. It is the whole basis of working behind somebody else, and we treat it that way.

What you get from us on paper

Certificate of insurance on request, straight from our agent. A scope and a price in writing before we start. One number to call, and it is Ricky, who has been in the trade for over thirty years and is on the job rather than behind a desk.