I heard a Home Depot ad on the radio recently targeted to commercial general contractors that made me pause. The spot is about the costs of commercial construction and how buying building materials in bulk can help GCs save money and bring down a construction project bid so they win the contract.

On the surface, the ad is true – buying building materials in bulk is cheaper. It’s the Costco principle. But the ad doesn’t begin to scratch the surface of a general commercial contractor’s duty to analyze construction cost projections to see if certain commodity or building material prices are expected to rise or fall during the life of a construction project.

Buying construction materials in bulk today won’t help your construction budget if prices for those materials are expected to drop tomorrow. More importantly, are you even ordering the right or best materials for your new retail construction or restaurant renovation job?

A commercial developer or shopping center owner who doesn’t bring a commercial construction contractor into the design build process early could unknowingly be sabotaging his own project’s timeline and costs. How?

As a national general contractor, it’s our job, not an architect’s job or even the client’s job, to know the jurisdictional authorities, inspectors and code compliances for all cities and states. It’s also our job to be abreast of commercial construction trends and to find the best construction material costs, and even alternatives to those materials.

Too often, general contractors are not asked to weigh in with their design build experience, just provide the lowest competitive bid they can for construction costs and materials. What unfortunately happens next is that once the project is awarded, the GC may alert the client that part of the design or some of the materials they were supposed to use don’t comply with city or state codes, so new materials are requested, change orders are made, costs run up and timelines are pushed back.

If only the client had negotiated with the commercial contractor and was brought in during the design phase he could have saved himself time and money. Speaking of money, make sure your general contractor is up on the following construction material prices:

• Lumber costs are down slightly compared to last year at this time.
• Wood and gypsum products are at a 10-year low.
• Marble and granite prices have come down.
• Metal, cement, drywall and paint have all gone up.
• The down economy has closed a number of steel mills, which is one reason steel
  is in short supply and has increased in price from last year.
• Any petroleum-based product is up like PVC foam insulation,
  rubber roofing, mats, flooring, etc.

But going back to my first point, the costs of these materials won’t mean a thing unless you hire the right commercial construction general contractor. After all, the building you want to build today, but won’t for six months, will cost something different in six months because material costs will change. You need an experienced general contractor to walk you through the process and help determine what makes the most sense to buy and when.

www.englewoodconstruction.com