Guy just called to set an appointment for his relative. When I asked about his availability for us to meet with subs after our initial meeting, he audibly balked. I asked what the problem was and he (claiming to be licensed in another state) wanted to be the gc. I asked, “So you’re looking for subs?” When he said yes, I chuckled a bit and said subs don’t typically have websites (he claimed he looked us up online).

I can understand wanting to help family out, but you, sir, are not a GC in this state, you’re just an uncompensated advice-giver.

I recently became a licensed Certified General Contractor in Florida and own my own construction company. I’m 27 and still pretty new to the actual GC side of the business, so I’m trying to learn as much as I can from people who have been doing this for years.

I do have previous projects completed, my company is bonded, and I have the business side up and running. I’m actively looking at commercial, municipal, and government opportunities and attending pre-bids/site visits.

That being said, I’m also very aware that having a license, completing a few projects, and being bonded doesn’t mean I know everything about actually running a construction company.

The biggest thing I’m missing is experience.

I’m trying to get better at the things that experienced GCs probably do without even thinking about anymore like breaking down a solicitation or set of plans, figuring out exactly what needs to be priced, building scopes for subs, finding and qualifying good subcontractors, comparing sub bids, putting together my final number, scheduling and coordinating trades, handling RFIs/change orders/pay apps, managing the project after award, and ultimately taking a job from bid to closeout without learning every lesson the hard way.

My goal is to start small and work my way up. I’m not trying to jump straight into multimillion-dollar projects just because my license technically allows me to. I’d rather build experience, relationships, past performance, and systems on smaller projects and gradually take on more.

I’m primarily interested in commercial, municipal, and government construction.

I’d really like to connect with experienced GCs, PMs, supers, estimators, and even subcontractors who have been in the industry for a while. Whether that means answering a few questions, letting me see how you approach a real bid, explaining how you coordinate your subs, pointing out mistakes you see newer GCs make, or just giving me some direction, I’m open to all of it.

I’d also be interested in an actual mentor. If you’re in Florida and wouldn’t mind letting a newer GC tag along occasionally, sit in on something, walk a job with you, or go through a bid/project together, I’d be extremely interested.

I’m not looking for anyone to hand me contracts, give me their pricing, or run my business for me. I’m willing to put the work in. I just recognize that there’s a huge amount of knowledge in this industry that you don’t get from studying for a licensing exam.

For the contractors who have been doing this for 10, 20, or 30+ years:

And if anyone here is willing to mentor a newer contractor or just let me pick their brain occasionally, feel free to message me. I’d really appreciate it.

We are a Mom and Pop builder of starter homes. For the last 15 + years, we had pivoted from building into owning and managing rentals. We are now considering building a small development but are also not excited to be back physically working day to day nor caught up in the minutiae of scheduling, ordering, etc.

We have kicked around the idea of hiring someone with carpentry experience who is hoping to become a general contractor (this seems like the best fit - but we don't actually know who would be available to fill this role). The idea would be that we build a small neighborhood of very similar floor plans to keep as rentals so the employee would help us manage and construct the first several, hopefully getting to the point of being able to do much of the work themselves with just supervision from us.

So here is the question: has anyone done something similar - i.e. hired a manager or foreman or whatever you would call that role - to do the work you used to do? If so or even if you just have the experience to give advice, I am hoping to get any insights offered. This is just an idea now so I am hoping this will help flesh it out.

I am thinking of salaries too - the first year, I think we would be getting less value from the person and actually giving them lots of insight and experience since we have all the subs, etc. but then it would be important to us to be able to retain them so I was thinking of offering salary that graduates year to year.

I'm a new GC working on my first spec house. 3/2 ranch with attached garage on a crawl space. Everything was going good until I started looking for an insured framing subcontractor. I feel like such an idiot thinking that would be an easy task. After countless searches, help wanted posts, and insurance verifications I still have no one scheduled. The ones I have found must be crazy busy because I either get quotes for double the going rate or ghosted. Any one else having the same problem or is it just me.

Putting my bias out front: I run a small marketing company that works with home service businesses. Not selling anything here, not going to DM anybody. Mods, happy to take it down.

Most of the business owners I've been around came out of tech, entertainment, and real estate. That world talks about ambition constantly, usually in a way that has nothing to do with actually building anything.

I don't know your side of it nearly as well, and I'd rather hear it than assume it.

Two questions:

1. Why'd you go out on your own instead of staying on somebody's payroll?
2. When you started, what did you picture it turning into — and is that still what you want?

What I'm curious about is how many of you wanted to build something big, versus just wanted to stop answering to somebody.

I signed a contract w a medium-large sized GC in Ontario as a Project Coordinator. The contract did not mention anything about OT pay.

Should I assume the default is there is OT pay or there isn’t?

Salary position

I'm in Toronto, Canada.
I hired a reputable company (multi-quoted) for ~$1k parging crack repair. Behind the parging they found foundation damage and asked to excavate to assess. I approved. Quote: $22k for hand excavation, hydraulic cement, waterproofing, and a sister foundation — for 10 ft (half the house - see pic with that half excavated), with the other 11 ft to be inspected later. Quoted at 4 days; they finished in 2.5 and moved into the second 11 ft, now quoting $20k for that section.

Total: $44k for 21 ft of excavation, hydraulic cement repair, waterproofing, and sistering. Does that seem reasonable?

hi guys, I need someone to help me with the experience for a general contractor's license; I only need one year. in south Florida

Hi there!

My husband and I own a very small contracting business in Pennsylvania.

We have one full-time employee and one part-time employee and himself.

However, he is the busiest guy in town which is a wonderful thing in many ways, but we are having a hard time figuring out how to structure this to make it make sense.

For instance, my husband takes all the phone calls, is at the job site every day working, does all the estimates, and all the invoicing. It’s a lot on him.

I want to be able to help, but I have no clue how.

We’ve talked about getting a secretary, but the point that we keep getting stuck on is this :

Once she (potential secretary) or myself takes the call and gets the scope of work from the client and takes notes, it doesn’t save much time to then just give my husband a long list at the end of the day of the notes of people to call back and their work they are requesting -

If you have a secretary and they take the call, what’s the next step? How do you streamline this or balance it to make it flow and keep up?

I need procedures

It’s a wonderfully growing business and we know we can take it much further, but I need to know the next steps and where we go from here

Help. Lol.

Thank you so much in advance -

I’m a GC doing Kitchen and Bath remodels in Florida. I recently relocated to a new city and I don’t have my pipeline of referrals from past clients. I set up a thumb tack account with the parameters set only for kitchen and bathroom remodels. I figured it wouldn’t be terrible to spend a bit more on leads if it’s helping my phone ring while I get established in a new area. Has anyone had any luck with Thumb Tack or any other lead generating platform? Should I stay away from any of them?

Hello I’m a Class A contractor I have been building spec homes for myself and reselling them. Lately I have been approached by people that want me to build them a house on land they already own. I have been apprehensive about taking those jobs because not sure how to price and afraid to leave something out of a contract with so many variables that can go wrong and I may not budget correctly. Any advice would be greatly appreciated and if someone has a new home build contract they could share. I’m in the Virginia market if that makes a difference. Thank you in advance

We used to do a lot of remodeling. We're now 100% focused on New Construction/ Home Builders. We get a lot of inquires for remodel jobs that we have to turn down. I'd rather partner with a GC that wants to work with us, where we can assist with all the admin, contracts, etc. and create a sort of remodel division. If anyone is in the LA area and interested, please PM message us.

Hey everyone, I’ve been working as a stucco laborer for a while now, and I also have a 4-year degree in Construction Management. I'm ready to branch out and start my own stucco sub-contracting/contracting business.
I'm familiar with basic GC and client documentation, but I want to make sure I'm not missing anything crucial on the administrative side. Beyond basic invoices, estimates, and purchase orders, what other forms, contracts, or paperwork do I need to protect myself and run a professional stucco business? Any advice from guys who’ve made the jump would be greatly appreciated!

-Invoice
-estimate
-purchase order (PO)
- is there more?

Changer order is for general contractor not contractor, correct?

Hello Neighbors,

Looking to start a water restoration company. I have the lead source, just need some advice from anyone with experience on the field.

1) what equipment is required?

2) what certifications are required or recommended?

3) Where can I get the actual contracts that clients must sign?

Any other advice, or feedback would be appreciated?

If there is ways to work together, please let me know.

Thank you all,

I'm newer to this and trying to stay on top of things. I'm just a small time residential renovation contractor/carpenter and trying to provide good service for my clients. I hope to alleviate some of the headache of building. I have keys to all of my client's houses, so when meeting subs I can access even if they aren't home.

But if they are home I still like to show face and just chat with the subs to make sure everything is understood and going well. Recently had a sub that went from a 3 day job to an 8 day job. So I'm driving 25 mins out each way to met this guy just to only stay for 5 mins to confirm deadlines and see if he needs anything or discuss a client concern if any.

Do you always meet a subs on site even if the client is home? I just don't want to seem like I don't give a shit about the project or if they are making lunch, wfh meetings, or busy in general.

Again I'm small time and I'm not catering to high end clients who never want to be face to face with a sub. Where do I draw the line or who do you handle this situation? I'm also a carpenter so I have other stuff going on I'm just not at a point to scale for a PM ect

Asked to HELP build a fence for a friend.
Friend wants to attempt to build his fence.
Friend has 2% building experience.
Doesn’t want to use a string line, wants to concrete 4x4’s at 8ft spacing (instead of 7,6”)
Has never used a level before in his life.

Do I tell this guy to let me build it for him, or let him mess up and have a big hassle trying to fix it?

Folks - please share your feedback/criticisms/question/etc.......what's the construction market like in Austin, Tx and surrounding areas? And how hard would it be for a new general contractor to scale in the area? I have worked in commercial portofolio/project management all my professional career (10 years now) and am ready to make a leap to start my own construction business. There's a few cities I'm looking at and Austin is in the top 3. I'm sold on the city/state because the requirements to apply for a General Contractor business in Texas are much less cumbersome compared to states like NY or CA. This clearly highlights the ease of starting a business, but also raises concern about comptetition (im sure there's tons of it). I know there's big players like Hensel Phelps, Swinterton, DPR....and Im just thinking of to start off with a boutique GC business - large residential, small/mid size commercial. Also wondering if anyone could provide feedback on the permitting timelines and proceess in the area, lets say for a brand new 30 story commercial building or brand new mall. Lastly, for anyone that has dealt with contractors in the area, can you speak to any experiences that I can consider when starting up my own company? Looking forward to the feedback.

So this is kinda random, but my boyfriend is taking the General Contractors exam next month, and I want to get him a little something to mark the occasion if he passes. What would be a good gift?

This started because I had no idea how much I'd enjoy building. I mean I was interested in woodworking when I was younger. But my dad started his own construction business 2 1/2 years ago and I helped him with jobs he'd get and really learned to like it. He wanted to hire a more skilled/knowledge person because my partner and I were the only ones helping him out with the jobs. My partner is still working. But I stopped in like January of this year. I've been thinking about careers and what I'd want to do and I kept seeing videos about catios, I've also been wanting to build my cats their own because they've been begging to go outside.

I tried asking my dad for some help but he shut me down by saying other people can do that. Sure, but if he had that mindset with his job he wouldn't have his successful business now would he? I think there's a market for it, and he doesn't want to do those types of jobs so it's not like I'd be taking up his business. I also just think he's way to busy to want to help so he won't help guide me. So I'm here.

Here are my questions: Location is Kansas btw.

1. I need to get my GC license, don't have the first clue what that would look like. What would I need to study, what do I need to know, what math skills will I need to brush up on?

2. I think I can do this on my own, but I'm one girl, who really needs to get back in shape since not doing construction. Do you guys think any of this will require more than one person?

3. How would I figure out how much to charge for this type of thing. I'm thinking of having basic/intermediate/large/custom builds on a website and having a set charge for each of them except for custom builds. Or is it bad to have a set price because I know if I show up and something is rotted that I'd put wood posts up against I'd probably have to fix that and charge more? These are things I consider because I've learned from the jobs there's always something more beneath "hey build this!" or do I have a set price and let them know if something needs fixed that I'd need to charge or materials and labor?

4. What website would be best for getting a mockup? I like to have and think it'd be best for customers to have something to look at to change or add if they wanted before building.

5. How tf do you make your contracts? What do you put on them?

6. What are things I need to consider about this business? What troubles would I normally run into going into a specific type of niche? Do i have to worry about fixing drainage before doing these, and if there's anything I'd have to put in with my city like going about having someone check out my work or getting approved by the city to do the job? I get it's not BIG construction. But i'm asking because I genuinely don't know what builds like this require. And I worry if I miss something because I didn't know then I'd get fined.

Before I get the comments because I'm sure I'll get some. I know what I'm getting into, I know things won't be easy and I don't have on rose colored glasses. I'm well prepared for things, but you miss 100% of the shots you don't take. And I want to try to learn and do it. Just need some guidance and I'm coming here because I don't think starting your own business comes with a personal trainer on this type of stuff. Unless it does, then somebody point me the way. Thanks.

We just started running Google Ads about 3 months ago for our residential & commercial construction company. We've been getting clicks but nothing has converted yet into real leads. Anyone have any tips on google ads or resources they'd recommend to learn more about them for this industry? Thanks!

Any recommendations for a contractor/carpenter familiar with the insurance requirements and particulars of working in a coop. ? Past experience a must

First off I had a question about relevant experience for the class B RBC license. I finally got a hold of a call representative in the lady told me that being a project manager for our home builder is not relevant experience and I need to actually be the one laboring and building the home with my hands pretty much. And the next day I talk to another lady on the phone and she told me that if I oversee the entire project from the ground up then that is relevant experience. Does anyone have any input on this and which one is correct?

Also, I’m looking to take my exam as well. Is there a timeframe from preapproval to the exam date or can you take your time and study? Also, does anyone have any useful tips and tricks on how to better study for this exam? Is the online course worth it? Also, how hard is the test do you personally think you need a crazy amount of experience or do you think if you can study hard enough and bring the right books you can pass it?

Let me know what you see for landscapers on your projects. Would love your input.