Tips for Choosing The Right General Contractor for Your Education Construction Project

Planning an Education Construction Project? Here’s some helpful guidance on choosing the right General Contractor.

As an project owner in the education construction space, you will likely have a broad field of General Contractors and Construction managers eager to bid on your construction project. Most will be professional outfits with solid business practices and reasonably well developed project management skills. If they have a professional estimating department their bids will likely be close as well, or at least in the same ballpark. So with all thing being equal, how do you choose the best contractor to whom you will award the project.

These 3 qualifications are essential.

1. They Have Direct Experience

Some builders can tend to view all construction projects as being cut from the same template. While misguided, this could be understandable in way, since all construction projects have many components in common (managing a schedule, controlling a budget and delivering the project on time) but there are aspects to Education construction that are utterly unique to the market. Look for a General Contractor who has fully internalizes these differences.

2. They Have A Specialized Team

As mentioned above, a firm’s direct experience in school construction matters greatly but it should go without saying that the actual team to be assigned to the project is where the rubber meets the road. Be sure that the Project Executive, Project Manager and Construction Superintendent that will be working on your project have a proven track record building similar projects in the education construction market along with the specialized experience required to deliver a successful project. A truly qualified education construction manager will have no trouble providing the resumés of the team at bid time.

3. They Have A Long List of Satisfied Clients

When evaluating a General Contractor or Construction Manager for your education construction project, be sure to tap the valuable information to be found in their past client list. Construction managers should be eager to put you in touch with clients who can give candid feedback about working with them on a related education construction project.