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At Murphy Bros., most of our work is designed and built by our in house staff, but we are regularly introduced to people whom have started working with another designer, draftsman or architect before they meet us. Our high service standards, quality craftsmanship and proven track record create opportunities to do work that we don’t design. A recent communication with a potential client who is “looking for bids” was responded to as follows:
“Ms. Anyone,
We would of course be interested in being considered to build your project. Below are some simple requests that, our nearly 30 years of being in business, has taught us to follow. We have learned that we can’t just put in dozens of hours of work to provide a complete bid without having some important information about the project. When we work with architects, they understand that if a company is being asked to put together a thoughtful and accurate bid, that there needs to have some certainty that the owners are serious about and able to do the project they are considering. Maybe you already have considered, assembled and planned to share this information, but in order to keep the process moving I am providing a summary as follows:
1) Are all of the drawings going to be finished and selections and/or allowances going to be specified with the bid request?
2) How many companies will be “bidding”?
3) Has the designer given you a preliminary budget of what they expect the project budget to be?
4) If you are using a lender, will your financing have preliminary approval prior to obtaining bids? Can you share what Lender you are working?
5) Will all of the invited companies be of similar experience?
- At least 10 years in business.
- Proven credit worthiness.
- At least 50 client references.
- At least 5 long term vendor references.
- Bank reference.
- All license, liability and Workers Comp. insurance.
- Do they have design staff to coordinate the selections or are they being provided by the designer, or the homeowner, or product vendors?
There are so many high risk companies that are relatively new and might have experience in terms of industry experienced staff, but have not proven that they can or will stay around for long. There are also quite a number of “new home builders” who are taking lumps trying to learn to do quality remodeling and few of them can provide many good remodeling references while they might have many good new home references.
I look forward for this opportunity to be considered as a partner with you in this project. If you could please include the information requested along with your plans and specifications, we can get to work. Please call or email me if there are any other questions that I can help answer for you.”