Contractor Cuts
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Contractor Cuts
How to Launch a Large Construction Project
We dive deep into the essential elements of launching major construction projects, focusing on the crucial pre-construction planning that prevents costly surprises and unhappy clients.
• Determining jurisdiction (city vs. county) is the first critical step in understanding permit requirements
• Professional expertise needed often includes structural engineers, civil engineers, arborists, and MEP specialists
• Foundation work and excavation represent the largest variables in estimating with potential for significant cost swings
• Utility connections require careful planning for water, power, gas/propane, and septic systems
• Implementing a structured pre-construction due diligence process protects both contractors and clients
• Transparent client communication about potential variables and change orders builds trust
• Construction logistics planning prevents unexpected property damage and restoration costs
• Leveraging subcontractor expertise helps create accurate preliminary estimates
• Experience is crucial - new contractors should work under established GCs before taking on large projects independently
Communication is key and education is how you get customers to not be upset with you. When clients understand the process, they become partners rather than adversaries when challenges arise.
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Welcome to Contractor Cuts, where we cover the good, the bad and the ugly of growing a successful contracting company.
Speaker 2:Welcome to Contractor Cuts. My name is Clark Turner and I'm Lincoln Baio. That's not true at all. I'm James. This is James. Yeah, thanks for joining us. All right.
Speaker 2:So today we are talking about when you are launching a large project. If you've got an addition you know, two hundred thousand dollar addition. You're doing a new build, you're doing a large project. How do we start? How do we build the estimate? How do we launch into doing that? What do we need to be looking out for? And this should go for any general contractor, even down to a smaller size job. You just kind of peel some of these layers away that we're about to talk about.
Speaker 2:But we thought we'd kind of do for a large job. So you really understand everything that's called for, permit wise and how to figure that out, right? I think a lot of guys we've seen they build their estimates for this new construction job and then they didn't realize I needed four different things that weren't on the estimate. And now we've got 20 grand of change orders that my customer is upset about and haven't even started the job. So how do we make sure we account for all that stuff, right? So today let's dive into it. Let's start with if I'm starting a job, we're going to go with the $200,000 addition. We're doing a master suite off the back of a property. If I'm building the estimate, james, where do I start figuring out like what do I need to do on the estimate? What do I need to include what? How do I even know, depending on where I'm located, what I'm supposed to include on the estimate?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so this is a lot of information, yeah, and you can find this information all over the place, but this is every place is going to be different, yep, but I think there's some commonalities and some common themes, so hopefully this is helpful.
Speaker 2:Well, we've got. The good news is we've got some experience in multiple states, Right. So James James has very recently pulled some permits out in Texas with our company out there, and then in Atlanta we've done some, we're doing some in Kentucky now. So we've kind of got the experience across the board that we'll talk about today. But also it could be across the street, in the same neighborhood, in the same city you've already been working in. That could be totally different requirements than where you worked previously you worked previously.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you might be right on the line. This is a great, this is a great intro to. You could be right on the line where you're either county unincorporated yep or city yep. And that's kind of where I would start is and a lot of guys try and get cute with this like, well, we could try and sneak this in. Just Just figure out where you are, I'll put the address in. I'll either call the city, say hey, this is the address, are we incorporated or not? If it's a question, sometimes there's no doubt. You're in a neighborhood, you're in an incorporated city.
Speaker 1:I don't know any other scenario that a neighborhood exists.
Speaker 2:Well, and there's different regulations. Again going back, there's the two main ones that we're looking at are city and county. Those are especially in Georgia and Texas where we've done work. Those are going to be your deciders as to what office you're going to be walking into. Now there's federal regulations, but usually that runs through the county or the city. Usually that runs through the county or the city. You're not pulling multiple permits for federal versus local, but what you are doing is identifying who's going to be in charge of doing the inspections.
Speaker 1:So let's start with unincorporated. Unincorporated, and this is just rule of thumb. But call the county and ask this is the job that we're doing, what are the requirements? They're going to ask you a litany of questions like uh, is it? Is it a commercial? Is it multi-family?
Speaker 2:is it?
Speaker 1:uh, you know well, is the? Is it a homeowner? Are they? Is this going to be their primary residence? All of those things have a bearing because in almost unincorporated, to my best of my understanding is a homeowner can pretty much pull any permit that you'll need for anything like that, so the client could actually run a permit. You don't need to be a licensed GC. In Texas you don't need to be a licensed GC anyway, but in Georgia you wouldn't need to be a licensed GC if the client can pull all of these permits unless they have a lender with the bank. That's saying you need a licensed GC to do this regardless.
Speaker 2:And, on the same note, I don't want my homeowner pulling my permits Usually. I want to be in charge of that. The cost versus headache on both their part and my part. You're going to be paying me to babysit the homeowners. Hey, have we done this? Have you done this yet? And then the homeowner is calling me, asking me all these questions that the city's asking them, and so I'm still doing all the work.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, you're not charging for it In this scenario, in a like in the scenario that I'm in currently. Uh, I can't pull the permit for for him. He has to pull the permit as the homeowner and but I'm doing all the work for him. So all of the numbers associate back to me. I'm talking with everybody. Every time he sets up an account, he's putting me as, like the, uh, the person to contact for information.
Speaker 1:Um, but let's go in with your example 200, 200,000 square foot or, sorry, $200,000 addition, mass primary suite. Sure, you've got all the MEPs that you're going to have to deal with, but let's go back to the very beginning. Sorry, we've got your structural engineer. You're going to need something in the way of of a of a construction drawing. Even if the County is not saying that you need one, you really need one because all of your trades are going to be looking for that.
Speaker 1:They're going to need to tell you your footings, like what. What is the requirement for the foundation slab or the requirements for the footings based on the structure that you're trying to build? So they're going to need a set of drawings to understand what those requirements are. Yep, a civil engineer is going to be able to tell you about your soil, where is it acceptable to put your septic? And in this you're going to need to deal with the County like you're dealing with the city inspector on the front end of all this stuff. Yeah, so, even though you're not having to deal with standard permits, you need to go into that office and get the late the lay of the land. What are the things we're going to be required?
Speaker 2:yeah, yeah, I mean, I would start by calling the city and if the city says, hey, that's actually county jurisdiction, which which is kind of the larger one, that's that's where I'd start. But when you call the city or the county, it's simply, hey, we're looking at putting together a bid for a property at this location. Can you give me some guidance as to what you all are going to be looking for? And they will give you the list. Now they might not, they might need just drawings of what you're doing. I have before, literally hand drawn on graph paper what we're doing and that suffices, yeah. At the same time, I would rather have a structural engineer come in and and be the one that defines exactly what my peers are going to look like, or my foundations. That way it's not up to my. I hope I got it right, and now the house is falling over.
Speaker 1:And when you get the once you start along the process. If you don't, if you just have a graph paper drawing of what you're doing, your trades are going to come in and be like, all right, well, what about this and what about this and what about this? And you're going to be like, oh yeah, I got to draw that and I got to redraw this because I haven't given enough space in my graph paper for, like the. How am I going to show them the framing components when I just have a little square on a piece of paper? You do need a set of drawings. You can get a set of drawings that isn't construction ready by a bunch of a lot of guys out there are drafters that can't stamp a set of drawings.
Speaker 2:Anyway. So going back into the people that you might need in putting together an estimate for this size of job, we've got the structural engineer. What else?
Speaker 1:You are going to, depending on where you're at, an arborist might be required.
Speaker 1:So, like in Atlanta or the city of Austin, they're going to need they have like heritage trees where they're trying to preserve green spaces.
Speaker 1:They have like heritage trees where they're trying to preserve green spaces and so if you've got a tree that comes a certain diameter or whatever they're going to say, you need to protect this tree, you have to put protection around the tree during so no one hits it and potentially kills the tree. Water and water and power. You're going to need to pull those things off the street. So, in an addition, you don't necessarily need to do that because you're not, you might not necessarily be moving anything, but if you're doing a new build or a uh, you know, an outbuilding, you're going to need to take a county or a city, water and the whatever you know power company you're working with. They're going to all have to be messing with the county right of way, which is the county owns the street 10 feet on either side of it, and so anything you're doing is going to be impeding on some of those areas, and so the county is going to be involved.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and usually that's also at the same time that you're doing a driveway permit to where you're getting the county or the city to get you an address, get you a location, be able to access their street and touch the street with what you're putting in. Yeah, septic, you need to be looking at the size of the current septic tank and what the, what the area, the code and wherever you're at calls for for size of septic to number of bathrooms. A lot of times it's actually bedrooms, bedrooms, the amount of people that can be staying and living in the house. So by looking at that and square footage you might need to put in a second septic tank by just doing a a single master bedroom addition off the back of the house.
Speaker 1:Or increasing the size, which is ripping your other one out, and you're at a $20,000 bill right there, yep.
Speaker 2:So knowing if it's septic or sewer is a big difference, and then knowing the size of the current septic and what the code calls for, size wise for the number of bedrooms, bathrooms that's in the property.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so there's. Also, you know, with the septic comes your field lines. So in this scenario, let's say we need to actually increase the size of the septic, you know, because this isn't a new build, this is an addition but let's say we need to increase the size of the septic. Your field line is, you know, where all of that sewage is basically going out and dissipating into soil, the soil, so your driveway. There's going to be certain areas where you can't put that, based on the soil. Then there's going to be certain areas where you really don't want to put it because of where your driveway is. You don't want anybody driving over your uh, your field lines. It's just not good for them.
Speaker 1:You can get away with it a your power. In some scenarios you can't go overhead, you have to go underground. In some scenarios you have to go underground, you can't go overhead. Some scenarios, both are available to you and so, depending on the other utilities that you need to get in there, you kind of need to map out.
Speaker 1:So, like in this Paulding County job I'm doing, our driveway is going all the way up the hill. Our driveway is going all the way up the hill and I've got to run water, power and propane up to this site. So initially we thought we were going to have to just run it all up one side, but then, dealing with all the you know, all the folks we figured we could put the water further up. We're going to run the power underground up the right side and we're going to run the propane up the right side. But that even tells us we have, I think it's two feet between each line, so I need enough space on the right side of my driveway to run both of these lines, and so you need to map all that stuff out before you pour concrete before you even lay gravel for the driveway.
Speaker 2:yeah, you need to know where those are, because if you've got large trees in the way you know, moving the driveway eight feet to the right might be the smartest move to not have to tear down all these trees.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and then with your propane or natural gas. So we're putting a tank there because this area doesn't have natural gas available to it, there's no county gas or city gas that you can tie into available to it. There's no county gas or city gas that you can tie into, and so all of these factors create parameters around the project and you have a lot of freedom, like you can move things around, but then the client has certain expectations of how they want their view to look or whatever, and all of these things have to work together so that you can actually finish the project. There's going to be certain things that you can't do, and those are hard conversations because the client, you know, might be in the mindset of well, you should have known that ahead of time, and it's like, yeah, well, there's no, this is the time that I'm sure that we figure this out, yeah.
Speaker 1:Then your foundation. That's, there's a lot there. Then your foundation there's a lot there. For instance, a normal project you're going to have your slab foundation and then there's likely going to be a couple piers that they need to do, whether that's in all four corners or whatever the case. We're doing a barn dominium build and those things. Uh, they have a lot of lift. This is what they call it.
Speaker 1:Like if you tornado comes in, you know it tears in there. If you have enough, if you don't have enough footings, it can literally rip that thing out of the ground. It's a big kite. And so the foundation footers on this thing are like some of the footers are four foot by four foot by four foot deep, yeah, and that's insane. But there's a ton of concrete going in there and you're not going to know all of these things until you kind of get into the project and know what you're dealing with. And so it would be really difficult, without drawings, without speaking with architects, without speaking with engineers, to know what the actual uh requirements are going to be for concrete. And so you're talking about a swing from hey, your whole foundation, all the concrete you're going to need on this project is $20,000 to it's $60,000.
Speaker 2:Well, it's like the one in Kentucky that went from, I think, originally $68,000 to $110,000 in concrete because of the requirements and the amount of concrete needed. So that's a huge swing when it comes to building that estimate. So again, we'll talk about it next, after we talk about all the requirements that you need to have on there as to how this goes onto the estimate and how to kind of navigate when we're having the change orders and the discussions and how to spend that time. But, yeah, keep going through the people that we need that we've talked about so far Civil engineer, structural engineer. We haven't talked about an architect.
Speaker 2:But obviously if you're putting in something, we need some sort of architectural renderings. And then we need, as you mentioned, arborists sometimes for the certain locations, mostly in cities, when we're touching or getting near protected trees, even if there's a tree overhanging your property. That's not even in your way. What are you doing about that? You can't put the property in that location, you can't extend the house out that direction because there's a tree overhanging it. And then the last set of people is the MEPs mechanical electricians and plumbers that you want to have scoping the project as well to make sure that they're not spotting stuff that you didn't see.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you got your grading and soil erosion control. So EPA regulations that tell you, hey, you need to protect that.
Speaker 2:You don't want soil runoff, especially if there's a creek, which is, you know, in a lot of these rural areas you're going to have random creeks that are running that you can't let dry creek beds that you don't even know that are there, that you got to do a perk test and all of a sudden you can't build in the center of your property that you were going to be putting the house on um, and then before you start the project, you're going to need to have your construction entrance where you've got a port-a-potty that's kind of an osha thing.
Speaker 1:You need to have a place where guys can go to the bathroom, needs to have a gravel lay down so people can kind of do deliveries and not rut everything out and on the right away.
Speaker 2:And even if it's not, required, like on a new construction. That's obviously required when you're doing an addition. A lot of times they're not requiring that, but even even so, I wanted to find that because we're going to tear up the customer's yard and they might not expect that right if we're doing a big addition off the back of the house. We got some heavy machinery that's going to be going right across their front yard to get to the backyard and so having that discussion, having plans for that, maybe we do lay some sort of covering on the areas that we're going to be having machinery. What does that look like? What's the cost of that? What's the cost of replanting and landscaping that we need to plan for that? All of a sudden there's eight grand of landscaping after the job's done. That wasn't called for. That they think we're responsible for, right.
Speaker 1:So, thinking through the construction entrance and where we're going to be really positioning all of our equipment and materials, yeah, so I feel like this has kind of been a smattering, but as we get kind of all this stuff in view and we're putting it on our scope, I always like to make sure that when we've talked about due diligence before but this is a prime example for why due diligence is so important I'm going to ask them for money to nail this stuff down and I'm going to give them a time frame. So, depending on the scope of the project, I might be like, hey, I need a month to go through due diligence. Due diligence is $5,000. At the end of due diligence, I'm going to have this laid out for you and we're going to have a pretty darn close idea for price. However, when we start excavation and grading, we could run into rock which, depending on where you're at where you're building, you probably know rock which, depending on where you're at where you're building, you probably know.
Speaker 1:Uh, you know like, if you're in, if you're in East Tennessee, you'd need to put in a ton of money for finding rock because there's bedrock everywhere. Uh, in the Paulding County job I'm doing, there was, there's granite boulders all like all over this property that we're just kind of like dipping and dodging, and so there's a lot of. There's a lot of things that you need to prepare the client for that they are not going to be aware of. They're thinking you're getting, uh, they're getting like hey, this is the scope I always put in my notes. Um, you know, excavation. This is the price for excavation. If we hit rock, there's going to be a change order. I couldn't possibly tell you what that is, because it could be this big. It could be as big as a car, it could be bigger.
Speaker 2:And that's something that we always like to do in our preset job line items in the software is you can build that out with all of those things to expect, the CYA statements to where there might be a change order if we find this, this and this. You can build out a very long paragraph of all that information, put it under your excavation line item and whenever you select it, boom, it's all there.
Speaker 1:So you're covering your butt on every single estimate and even down to like okay, we've dug our foundation footers, we've dug our piers, and then we had to pause and now we have a ton of rain Guess what? We need to dig those out again. We've got to pump it. It's not all the way. It's filled in a certain amount and that's an act of God. There's no way that I'm going to get that guy to come back out here and dig those out, for no money.
Speaker 1:He didn't make it rain and we didn't put a circus tent in the scope to cover the whole project right.
Speaker 2:So, kind of backing up, we first I call you for this $200,000 addition. Sure, you come out, you visit the property, you take a look at it, You're going to put together a scope within 24 to 48 hours of all of this stuff that you think is going to be needed. With your best bet, your best dollar, I think it's going to be this. I've worked in city of Atlanta before, or I've worked outside of a city limit, so I think these are the things they're going to ask for. I might even at that point, call the city that I'm in or the County that I'm in and say hey, what are your requirements here? If I, if I'm going to do this, it's worth that phone call. It's a five minute phone call, right, get to the person, ask them and I'm going to put some of that stuff on my quote. And A, we're educating the customer, and B, we're showing the amount of knowledge we have, even though we might have never worked there. So when I show up with the quote, the next guy that's quoting against me is saying oh, I need this. You know it's $180,000. For me I'm like it's $178,564, because I've included all of these line items that are spelling out what we're going to need. And again I'm saying, with that quote, with that desk estimate or the initial site estimate, I'm going to the customer saying, hey, this is what I think from my best guess.
Speaker 2:But I want you to know, the next thing that we do on our steps is I'm going to do my pre-construction due diligence and that's this top line item for five grand. And what I'm going to do is I'm going to do my pre-construction due diligence and that's this top line item for five grand. And what I'm going to do is I'm going to meet with the city, I'm going to meet with inspectors, I'm going to meet with my mechanical, electricians and plumbers. I'm going to meet with I'm going to pull together our arborist, if we need that. I'm going to pull all of these people together.
Speaker 2:We're going to get you your plans. You got to pay engineer drawings. Once I get all this stuff together, we're going to actually have a revised and finalized quote and some of these numbers might go down and some might go up, depending on what we quote. But I don't know that till we get there, and I'd rather not lock you into a $200,000 renovation till we know exactly where every penny is being spent Right, and so that's that's what we're talking about with that pre-construction the due diligence period of. I'm going to take a $5,000 payment for my time and effort to put all of that together and finalize the quote for them.
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 1:Um so building all this out. There's, um, like I said, there's a bunch of COIA stuff that I'm putting in there and it's really we say we call it CYA, but I think a better term for it is educating, because the CYA is just so that we know that. They know that this isn't fully baked, because it's impossible for this to be fully baked. There's certain areas like my sheetrock shouldn't change unless the client changes something. My framing number really shouldn't change unless my client changes something. But things like your excavation, things like your plumbing, like the pre-slab work that you need to do for the plumber, maybe the electrician, maybe you're putting outlets in the ground, all those things can change based on what you're doing in the ground, and so you need to make sure the client knows that those things are a little bit open-ended, even though you're trying to budget for outliers. It's it's.
Speaker 1:There's so many factors, there's so many variables and on top of that, every city has one of those inspectors, even even we go back to the county thing. There's going to be county inspections that have to happen that just aren't as um, uh, detailed as the city stuff. They're more concerned about the footprint of the home and the utilities that are coming in because they're crossing over the right-of-way, but there's still going to be things like you might have. What do they call them? I won't say his name. There's a guy in this county that they have a nickname for him and he's he's the guy that's going to fail you for any any old thing. And so you might have that guy that you're dealing with that is going to hold you accountable to things that are not even they're brand new codes that he's just real, real excited about.
Speaker 2:Well, especially on an addition. I know, like the city of Atlanta, we've been trapped before where if you improve more than 50% of value of the property, you now have to update everything. And that's something that and that was like a $50,000 change order because we're updating all the electrical, all the smoke detectors, all the. There was a lot of updating because of the size of the addition, increasing the value of the home, which it's hard to plan for that until you sit down with an inspector or the city planner that says, hey, you can't do that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and sometimes it's subjective. You know, is this 50 percent? What are we doing? This based off?
Speaker 2:of who's valuing the house money yeah, what's the deal?
Speaker 1:yep hmm.
Speaker 2:So that's putting that together, building that out. We've got the estimate. I've got all the stuff down, james. When you're looking at this stuff down, james, when you're looking at this stuff, we talked about foundation peers footings being kind of the largest unknown. Until we get some of that, where are other spots in that estimate?
Speaker 1:from the side estimate to the revised final estimate that you see the largest swings in dollars really that should be it, but every job, if you've been in this industry for any amount of time, you know that things are still changing with the client as you move down the road, because if a number comes back and it's higher than you guys want it, the client's like I gotta find a way to save. So you know what? Let's take one of the bathrooms out, okay. Well now new drawings, new drawings, rebids I gotta get, I gotta send this back out to get rebid, and everybody needs to. The electrician needs to relook at it, the plumber needs to relook at it.
Speaker 1:Uh, you know, tile and sheet rock, like, for the most part, those types of things you're like okay, take this square footage out, take this linear footage out, we're good. But you going to need to take another week or two, depending on the guys that you're working with. Like, these aren't guys that are working for me, they're 1099 contract guys. So when something changes that pushes our timeline back, you need to make the client aware there's so many moving pieces. Some people charge for that kind of stuff. I typically don't. You know, depending on what it is.
Speaker 2:If we have to, we're in the phase of the if we've already broke ground and now you're changing the footprint. Yeah, that's a big deal, yeah.
Speaker 1:So the areas that change a lot. This is why it's so important to have, while you're going through, due diligence, one of the things that you need to be doing is making sure that the selections are getting done, like the windows, the doors, your plumbing selections, because as soon as you start framing you need to put your valves in. The plumber needs to know what he's putting in so that everything kind of works together. Same with the electrician. One thing that is a big deal that I don't think a lot of people think through is your panel load. So we're doing this project and we've got options right.
Speaker 1:Hvac can be electrical or gas. Your oven stoves, it can be electrical or gas. Your water heater can be electrical or gas. So, depending on the size of the house and the amount of power that you need, instead of doing a 400 amp panel, maybe we could get that down to 200 amps. If I run HVAC, water heater and everything that I can run off gas, I run it off gas, but then that goes into.
Speaker 1:Okay, is there natural gas to the property? No, okay, let's get propane Most of the time. Propane you can rent or lease a tank and it's like a hundred bucks, but you pay, you know, monthly for the usage and yada, yada, yada, um. Or you can buy a tank and it's like 5,000 bucks but you can put it wherever you want. The truck needs to be able to access that point to not only fill the tank but also, when you're done with that tank, to remove it. So if you want to put your tank in a place that's not going to be accessible, they've got 150 foot of hose so they can, you know, pull up to the house. But if you've got like a corner that they can't access it and pull the tank back out, you're going to have to buy that tank. So that's going to affect your budget.
Speaker 1:You know, one way or the other, and so those things can change as the project is moving, and so your job as the, as the GC or whatever your title is, is to make sure that the client is aware of, based on that decision, x, y and Z is changing. We need to talk through those things, and a lot of the time the client ends up. You know we need to talk through those things and a lot of the time the client ends up you know, oh yeah, well, then forget about that. Like we were going to go this direction, but now we've got to go a different direction because of price. You need to be able to give them a legitimate understanding of what that's going to look like.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, no, I think that's good. The last thing, when we're talking additions versus new construction, uh, we're also upgrading HVAC. We're upgrading there's, there's an extension from the current house as to what the like, the, the, the load of power for adding 300 square feet off the back of a house, you know, is do we have a max out load on the, on the, on the breaker box, right? Do we need to do a sub panel? How do we do that? There's all sorts of. You just don't tie into electrical, you don't just tie into the plumbing unless you're on sewer, you don't just tie into the HVAC and run things there. But, knowing that, understanding that, are we doing a new system for the house, hvac wise? Are we doing just a? You know mini splits for that additional space? You know all of those conversations change the price on the on the job by 10, $20,000.
Speaker 1:And even down to like your insulation, can affect your HVAC. What's like the energy efficiency of the house? Uh, if you're doing spray foam and you know you can probably get away with a lesser system because of the efficiency of it. But most of the time people don't build houses with oversized units and from my understanding but the guy that was doing HVAC that you started an HVAC company with he said it's bad for a system to be oversized, it's not working right, yeah, something. Well, if you oversize, it's bad for a system to be oversized, it's not working right, or something.
Speaker 2:Well, if you get a four-ton unit to heat and cool 500 square feet, it's going to be running full blast. You'll get up to speed in about four minutes and it'd be freezing cold. And then it cuts off and you get warm and so there's a huge temperature fluctuation because it gets the space up to temp so quickly and so it's running hard off, running hard off, running hard off. As opposed to a right size hvac for the right amount of square footage, which you can look up, chat gpt will tell you for your location in the united states because there's different zones for it, for hvac, um, but you can look, say, okay, a four ton should be this many square feet for this square footage. I need two tons at this location, right? And so you look at it and say that's the best for the life of the HVAC to get it sized perfectly. But also, am I slapping one on with the new square footage, because it's also included in the like what's the current square footage and what's the current HVAC size? How new is it? How old is it, all that stuff? So, again, pass your plans to an HVAC technician and let them tell you all this stuff and figure it out with you. That's the best thing, I think, to end this podcast.
Speaker 2:I think the most important thing is we've said a lot of different things that can feel overwhelming when you're getting in. And again, I probably wouldn't say if you've never been on site for a large addition or a new build, don't try to bite one off yourself. Go work for a GC, go go work as a project manager, go be under someone, be be a sub for someone to kind of understand and really get into it. But when you're getting into building these for the first time, doing an addition on your own, you're, you've done some smaller additions, I'm going to larger stuff, doing an addition on your own. You've done some smaller additions, I'm going to do the larger stuff.
Speaker 2:I would say the most important thing call the city or county, get with a civil engineer, structural engineer, architect, get your plans drawn, get an understanding of the plans and then take that to the people that will be doing the work Framers, electrician, plumber, hvac, sheetrock, even flooringoring. You can send those plans to each of those and say, hey, listen, I'm putting together a bid. I don't need it formal, but give me some numbers and they will off the top of their head. If they're good. They're gonna say, oh, that's a twelve to fifteen thousand dollar hvac that you're gonna need on that property. It's small amount, this and this, and then you can put your numbers together and go to the customer with that.
Speaker 2:Don't spend three weeks on building an estimate just for customers to say, hey, I'm going a different way. Put those numbers together, use your resources, but get you know. Don't spend more than a few hours putting this together. But you should be able to get in that ballpark of a roundabout number of what it should cost. And enough that the customer says, hey, that sounds good, I want to move forward with you. If we can hit these numbers, we're good. Yeah, and that's when I take my deposit for my pre-construction and that's where I do my homework.
Speaker 1:But before you take your deposit, the client needs to know this is still an estimate. Yes, this is an approximation. When you pay me for due diligence, I'm going to nail this down and you'll know exactly when I'm done with this. You'll know exactly where it's not fully baked yet and that's going to be because we have to get into the ground. That's right, or something like that. That's right.
Speaker 2:Very good. Communication is key and education is how you get a customer to not be upset with you, because you're helping them understand the process and once they know that process, they're a lot more comfortable with being a part of the process than blaming you for the process going wrong. Clip that, that's a t-shirt.
Speaker 1:All right, thank you guys for listening. We'll talk to you next week. Bye.
