J-Peffer

State funded jobs,

I’m currently operating a roofing and siding company I started 3 years ago. I do okay with it, and I keep worked booked up just fine. My niche has always been with the customers, and I’m good with them I feel, I’ve been able to establish a good customer base and a good company name.

Through the winters, I normally can pickup inside work, or even some outside work just to keep the cash flow going. I recently had the opportunity to do some state funded work for a customer on a commercial project.

I’ve played with the idea of starting a construction company also, in pair with my roofing company. I could do the work under my roofing company, but I feel I can’t really advertise construction work….through a Roofing Co. name, its too specific to the work.

The things that worry me about starting a company with the intentions of doing city and state work is the paper work involved. It would go from being a “contractor” where as I now I’m on site quite a lot. I would increase my labor cost. Because of the Davis Bacon act, I’ll be paying prevailing wage, which is not that bad for carpentry work, but it gets quite higher when you start to get into specialty trades.

I’m also currently operating with out being bonded, fully insured, but I’d have to be bonded for the value of the job, 200k. I don’t mind doing it, but I being bonded is really not required by most customers.

Basically, I feel I can get the work, but I’ll be adding a lot into the mix, lawyers, accountants, taking on more employees’s and subs.
What would you guys with experience in growth like these recommend? Again, I’d still operate my roofing company the same, but would start a construction company for this type of work. Minimum advertising cost and operating cost applied, few cheap adds and a phone line.

Thanks for any input!!

Blast&Coat

If you know the right people and you are good with customers as you say if you get in good with the right people you should go for it. A friend of ours used to have a small GC business and now he rakes in ridiculous money doing only government work. I'm not sure what kind oof in he has but lets just say the last job he bid was 2.5 mil over what he thought it would cost because he didnt really need the work and he said they didnt even blink an eye because of time contraints. Needless to say that akes for a pretty good year. Imno expert at it by any means but the fwe guys I know when they started doing government work they stopped doing everything else and they do just fine.

J-Peffer

Thanks for the info:

In my area, there is only one other guy who really bids this type of work. I've already established a relationship with the Local County Developer who gives out all the info. I'm younger, 28 and so is she, we hit it off really well and she got me a lot of great info.

A lot of the work that had to be bid, requires simply a normal business and the contractor to be lead base paint certified. Again, only 1 person in the area is.

I actually come from an accounting back ground, and am good with numbers. I just like to be on the job too as much as possible. My guys are pretty good about quality of work, but a lot of calls are calls I'd like to make on the job too. Basically just your average control freak.

But the local county is pretty poor, and they are reliving a respectable amount of grants to help bring the area around. The developer is really on top of things, and she seems easy to work with. Not to mention, blonds are my specialty!