Constructing a large commercial project in San Francisco is not an easy job. The city has been recently named as the world’s most expensive location for construction. When you are in the process of starting a big commercial project like a multi-story office complex, retail facility, school, or complex in San Francisco, the first thing you need is to select a good commercial contractor to handle the project. In this blog, you will learn what are the responsibilities of a commercial general contractor, how to find a quality professional, and what essential factors to consider while hiring one.
For those who haven’t, read our part 1 on Choosing the Right General Contractor in San Francisco.
Who Is A Commercial General Contractor?
A commercial contractor is a general contractor who takes charge of the commercial construction & renovation projects of businesses.
They’re responsible for making sure everything gets done according to the plan. The commercial contractor can be either a construction company or an individual. They handle everything, from hiring and working with suppliers and staff to coordinating with designers and architects. It’s their job to make sure the project goes smoothly, sort of like running a show!
The commercial projects include the construction and renovation of office spaces, hotels, restaurants, cafes, educational institutions, shopping malls, retail stores, medical labs, warehouses, and many other working spaces; which a general contractor who has previous experience in commercial projects only can handle.
How To Select A Commercial General Contractor in San Francisco?
You should never consider a general contractor who specializes in non-commercial projects such as residential projects as the contractor won’t be considered a commercial general contractor because the rules & regulations set for a commercial construction project are not at all similar to the rules & regulations set for other types of projects.
To efficiently manage your commercial construction project in San Francisco city or its suburbs, you need to first find the most suitable contractor in San Francisco so that your project can be completed as per the scheduled timeline and the initially decided project budget.
A commercial general contractor is the most important person on your project landscape and is the sole authority conducting your project in all its phases. They come into the project before every other person and are the last to leave your project. They shoulder the entire responsibility of the project and conduct the project in all its stages.
A Commercial General Contractor’s Main Functions Include:
Permitting – Creating all the documents and reports that are to be submitted to the Local, State, and Federal authorities and getting all the Permits, Licenses, and permissions necessary for the starting and running of the commercial construction project.
Planning – A general contractor in San Francisco will have to create a detailed plan on how the project will progress in the future; he will have to forecast the labor, material, and equipment requirements at different stages of the project. They will have to plan how to communicate relevant information among all the project members.
Budgeting – After planning the project, a commercial general contractor will then provide an estimated project budget, including costs of labor, materials, and equipment operating costs for the project. The estimated budget should meet the desired project results decided by you and meet the work requirements specified by the engineers & architects.
Designing – The commercial general contractor works through their in-house architects and other teams of professionals engaged in designing the project or engaging the right teams of architects, draftsmen, civil engineers, and other professionals required to complete and finalize the overall design, structural diagrams, and other building plans necessary for obtaining all the building permissions and complying with all legal formalities regarding the commercial construction.
Purchasing supplies— Takes the responsibility to purchase, transport, and make available all types of building materials, equipment, and fixtures that are to be used in commercial construction. For this, the commercial general contractor enters into special arrangements with an entire range of suppliers and manufacturers. They help you get the best deals in the procurement and supply of all required materials for your building project.
Adhering to the building codes- The general contractor in San Francisco is responsible for designing, building, and completing the commercial project’s construction complying with all your local building codes.
Managing the zoning regulations– As the person who is conducting the whole construction project, the commercial contractor has to take care of the zoning regulations and other related regulations that apply in your local area.
Project Management – Makes sure that the project gets completed on time and is completed within the estimated budget, labor, material, and equipment requirements, with no compromises made on the desired project results. In addition, the commercial general contractor can improvise the scheduled plan during the execution of the project as long as it doesn’t extend the project timeline.
Quality Assurance – The commercial builder will have to examine the quality of the workforce, and the materials ordered to ensure that the result of the project is of the highest possible quality, which brings max. ROI.
Effective Safety Measures – To assure the workforce’s safety, the general contractor in San Francisco will have to hire qualified & experienced safety personnel on-site. They will also have a feasible safety policy to guarantee the safety of the workforce. The policy will include precautionary and dynamic mechanisms to make the workforce feel safe and secure during the project.
Learn in detail about: what can a commercial general contractor do.
How to Find Your Commercial Contractor In San Francisco?
There are many ways to find a commercial contractor in San Francisco. Here are the most useful methods you can try:
1. Search Online
In the present days of the internet era, you have numerous facilities to find your commercial general contractor online. Google is the largest storehouse of information to help you find your general contractor for your San Francisco commercial construction project.
You can use the Google search engine to get the list of all the professionals serving your area of construction. Simply Google queries like “construction companies in San Francisco”, “general contractor San Francisco”, “construction companies in Bay Area” or “commercial contractors near me”. This will give you the starting point in your search for your general contractor in the San Francisco area. Apart from this, you can also consult the business directories that have business listings for San Francisco and find other online resources that give the list of General contractors working in your project area.
Consolidate all the lists and select the ones that look promising to you based on their years of standing in the construction industry and other relevant criteria. By doing this, you will be able to shorten the list to manageable levels.
2. Perform Due Diligence
After this, you can consider the list entry by entry and find the experience level of each commercial contractor, the previous projects they have worked on, and the types of customer reviews they have received from their past customers.
San Francisco is one of the largest cities in North America. Hence, you will be surprised to find hundreds of firms that are offering their services as Commercial general contractors. There is a wide variety of commercial construction projects, and each one of them calls for a different approach and a different set of people to work on to complete the project.
As such, no two projects can be said to be similar. They have their peculiarities and variables that must be conquered to bring the construction project to its successful conclusion.
3. Look for Reputation, Expertise, and Relevant Experience
The secret of finding the right general contractor in San Francisco for your project lies in finding contractors who have worked on projects similar to yours. For this, it is necessary to find a contractor who has dealt with many projects similar to yours. Then only can he be a valuable addition to your project.
This also indicates their level of expertise. You can evaluate a commercial general contractor’s performance levels and their way of working by carefully considering the customer reviews and the testimonials they have placed on their websites.
4. Review their Professional Track Record
Apart from this, consider the media section of their websites, see the gallery images, and collect details of the projects they have worked on as a general contractor in San Francisco.
When you do this, you can find out the types of projects they are more comfortable with and the types of projects they like to work on. This also indicates the types of resources a building contractor has and the equipment in their possession.
5. Shortlist Preferred General Contractors
All these factors can be taken together to zero in on the general contractor who is well-versed in doing projects similar to yours. You can assure yourself that they will bring your project to its successful ending as they have done for their earlier projects. This way, you can shortlist the commercial contractors who are to be considered further on other counts to get selected for your project.
Once you have shortlisted them, it is time to contact them directly to get all the relevant information from them to make the final decision as to who will be your commercial general contractor for your San Francisco building project.
Checklist of commercial general contractor hiring criteria
Relevant Factors That Will Help You To Select Your Commercial Contractor In San Francisco:
Once you have the shortlisted names of the contractors who are to be considered for your project, you need to consider the following factors that have a good weightage on your decision as to the appointment of a commercial contractor for your project:
Licensing, Bonding, and Insurance: This is a fundamental qualification for a commercial contractor as only a duly licensed person can take charge of any construction project. So, you need to verify if the company you want to select as your contractor is duly licensed and is fully covered by insurance for all the acts they will undertake to complete the project. Any website of a qualified building contractor will have their license number mentioned in it. You can verify a general contractor license by visiting the California State Licensing Board (CSLB) and checking its status on the website. This platform will also show you the bonding and worker’s compensation insurance information.
A general contractor in San Francisco must be bonded to protect you against liabilities that may arise due to potential on-site accidents. You verify their documents and, if necessary, get the help of a professional who is well-versed in these lines to find the exact nature of the licensing and insurance documents.
Portfolio of Past Projects: Every commercial contractor has an established online website where you can browse through their past projects. Assess their craftsmanship on commercial construction projects similar to yours and if there are none, request them to provide a list. Use Google Maps Street View to get 360-degree visuals of the projects or, taking one step further, personally visit the actual construction sites to review their quality of execution.
Communication: Communication is the most vital link that will get the project going as you want. So, it is necessary to find the right person as your commercial contractor who gives utmost importance to maintaining the right level of communication between you and other stakeholders of the project.
The general contractor in San Francisco should understand the type of communication you need and should create the right mediums to communicate with you at all required times in such a way that you get periodic updates on the project. You can contact him or any other person in the project at all times you need to contact them.
Contractor Bid: When you have provided the project details to the shortlisted commercial contractors through an RFP (Request For Proposal), they will prepare their bids and submit them to you. Contractor bids are important as they represent their terms for working on the project, and this includes the amount they are going to charge you for acting as your contractor.
Small business owners can pick one of the two ways of procurement, which are:
- Sole Source Procurement – Performing due diligence of a few contractors first and then negotiating a price with only one preferred contractor.
- Best Value Source Selection – Shortlisting 3-4 reputable general contractors and inviting each of them to submit their bids. After evaluating multiple bids, owners can go ahead with the one promising the most value.
Referrals: Contact businesses that have lately completed their project; by listening to their good/ bad experiences, you will get to know about the reputation of the local as well as well-known commercial general contractors of San Francisco. You can then start contacting contractors with positive reviews; this will ensure that you end up hiring a qualified contractor.
Proposal Comparison: Remember! All proposals are not the same; examine each proposal to identify the key differences among them. Consider proposals from general contractors in San Francisco who have experience in projects that are very similar to yours.
For example, if you require a corporate office, ask the contractor if he has experience in white-collar office settings. You can differentiate the proposals based on each contractor’s skills and the levels of responsibilities it can undertake.
Cost Shouldn’t Decide: Never let project cost be the only decision influencer. There are chances that a building contractor who charges the lowest might lead to expensive future problems and repairs as the quality of the work could be below grade. You must consider contractors charging fairly close to the market price as those contractors will deliver quality assurance. Though price is an influential aspect of selection, it is not appropriate to choose the contractor solely based on the bid as a lower bid may not always be the most accurate one. As a better practice, select a commercial general contractor based on a combination of qualifications and price.
Contractor’s Solvency: Knowing about the contractor’s financial stability is important. You should be sure that they have the required funds to make all the payments and are capable of making any unanticipated expenses that occur during the project’s execution. Ideally, the builder must have sufficient funds in the bank account or have a credit line to borrow funds for the unanticipated project expenses.
Interview Answers: The authority of a commercial building contractor highly depends on how clearly and honestly they answer your interview questions. Prepare an extensive questionnaire to know the skill sets and availability of resources you will be getting from them.
Some of the questions you may ask general contractors in San Francisco include:
- What commercial construction services do you offer?
- Who will be our primary point of contact?
- How will you mitigate potential challenges arising throughout the project?
- How do you measure the quality of your team’s workmanship? Are there any KPIs (Key Performance Indicators)?
- What is your procedure for selecting subcontractors and suppliers for the job?
- How do you ensure all the project tasks get accomplished on schedule and under budget?
- What will be the safety protocols followed during the construction process?
- What sets you apart from other commercial construction firms?
All in all, consider all the above-mentioned factors together and make your final choice as to the company or person who is going to lead your construction project.
Conclusion
You need to start the search for the Commercial contractor as early as possible to come onto the scene and take control of the project from the early stages. Adhere to the basics of selecting commercial general contractors by trusting your logic and having a good view of the person behind all the hype. If you find the person to be right and reliable, you can go ahead and take him into your team, and your project will be well on its way to successful completion as per your requirements.
To speak with our experienced commercial contractors for your project, please contact us. Constructive Solutions, Inc. provides quality general contracting services for various commercial projects across San Francisco and the Bay Area.
FAQs
What different kinds of commercial construction projects do general contractors handle in San Francisco?
Some of the building projects commercial general contractors in San Francisco handle are –
- Ground-up, renovation, and remodeling
- Tenant improvements
- Seismic retrofits
- Office construction
- Industrial and R&D
- Retail facilities
- Hospitality centers
- Medical offices and Life Science Facilities
- Value engineering and many other commercial projects
How much do commercial general contractors charge per hour?
A general contractor in San Francisco with 10-20 years of experience may charge between $35 to $40 on an hourly basis.
What safety measures does a commercial general contractor in San Francisco follow?
All commercial contractors in San Francisco must comply with the Cal/OSHA safety regulations that apply to their on-site operations.
Relevant Resource:
10 Common Mistakes To Avoid When Hiring a Commercial Contractor
Constructive Solutions, Inc. is a full-service commercial construction company serving San Francisco and Bay Area.
Whatever your vision, we have the resources, experience, and insight to make your concept a reality, and a space where your business can flourish.
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