Why Good Contractors Don't Need Your Work, And How to Make Them Want It Anyway

Good Contractors Don't Need Your Work. They Need a Reason to Care About Yours.

I had a retail center with a back wall sitting up against a bayou. Foundation below grade. Wall had never been properly waterproofed and a storm was coming. Not the kind of storm you board up windows for and hope for the best. The kind where if that wall failed the damage on the other side of it was going to be significant and expensive and entirely preventable if we moved fast enough.

The contractor moved fast enough.

He dug out the wall. Got into the work. Somewhere in the middle of it he realized the waterproofing material we had accounted for was not going to be enough to close it up properly before the storm hit. He did not call me. He did not call my client. He did not submit a change order request or send an email asking how we wanted to handle it.

He sent one of his guys on a six hour drive to pick up the additional material. They closed the wall before the storm. The building was protected.

I found out about it three jobs later. Not from him. From one of his employees who mentioned it in passing like it was nothing, just something that happened on a job once. The contractor had never said a word. Never invoiced for the material. Never invoiced for the drive. Just handled it and moved on.

That is not a contractor story. That is a loyalty story. And loyalty like that does not come from a competitive bid process. It does not come from paying the lowest number that gets the job done. It comes from years of being the kind of client that a good contractor actually wants to work for.

Good GCs are busy. This is the thing most investors and developers do not understand until they have been on the wrong end of a contractor who does not show up, does not call back, and does not particularly care whether your project finishes on time. The good ones, the ones who drive six hours without telling you, have more work than they need. They are choosing which clients to prioritize every single day. The question worth asking is whether you are the kind of client they choose.

Here is what I have learned about being that client after 30 years on both sides of this relationship.

Pay more than you should. Not what the market says the job is worth. More. A contractor who knows you pay fairly does not have to wonder whether this job is going to be a problem. That clarity is worth something to them and they will return it in kind.

Do the work before they start. Have your scope line itemed. Know what materials you want used. Show up prepared. A contractor's time is their inventory. Wasting it with a disorganized scope or a client who changes their mind three times before demo is done is expensive for them whether they invoice you for it or not.

Act like it matters to you beyond the money. Contractors can tell the difference between a client who sees them as a cost center and a client who gives a damn about the work. The ones who drive six hours without telling you do it for the second kind of client.

Build in a completion bonus. A percentage tied to finishing on time and on scope gives your contractor ownership of the outcome. Not just financially. Psychologically. They are not just executing your project anymore. They have skin in the result.

And hire someone who knows what they are looking at to review bids and inspect work. Not because your contractor is dishonest. Because the details that matter, the ones that will cost you money or cause problems six months after the job is done, are invisible to someone who has not been on enough job sites to know what they are looking for. A good contractor respects a client who takes the work seriously enough to verify it. It tells them you know what good work looks like and you expect it.

The contractor who sent his guy on that six hour drive had worked with me long enough to know that I was not going to let him take the fall if something went wrong and I was not going to take credit if something went right. That was the whole basis of it. Nothing more complicated than that.

Find contractors like that. Be a client like that. The relationship that follows is worth more than any single job either of you will ever work on together.

If you want to talk about how to evaluate contractor relationships on a specific project or market, what to look for, what to ask, and what the bids are actually telling you, that conversation is at calendly.com/jeph-reit.