You're right Bob.
I have to question as to what happened to the other subs that worked on stores in Sacramento, San Jose, Sunnyvale, and so forth in Northern Cal. Where did they go? Why aren't they doing this job?
Strong said they had some issues with their last contractor, really?? There are two sides to every story. The word I got from the site super is that one guy from a firm did the last store and he quit right after, and, got another job elsewhere.
There is nothing on the web except for PR for these guys.
Obviously, I am going to re-read the contract again. The first time it was all boiler plate stuff, like other out of state contractors we do work for. There was a lot of trade secret and "don't contact our clients" clauses....which I don't care about anyway.
I way underbid this thing and that bothers me a lot because I rarely do that now. I thought I had it covered, based on our other projects, but no, that is not how it worked out.
So, I am going to go back and make notes of every little thing we had to do that wasn't on plan, or, had to modify the plan. I am going to charge full retail rates for everything we did that was modified or extra.
I really don't like having to pull the "trump card" and basically screw everyone else too, but it wasn't my doing that got the situation where it is now.
PS. Someone has to go around and do all the fire inspections and testing on their sites, and, whoever it is has to be within 2 hours of the site.
It sounds as if they've got a claim on the mother lode, and their approach is to have other folks do the digging.
As far as what people told you rather than what's in the contract - paying for licenses, how quickly you'll get paid, and so on - well, the contract rules, and it's easy for a PM or billing clerk to make promises that aren't theirs to keep. If they're operating out of another state, they may not really care about developing loyal local subs - they can just use new subs on a project-by-project basis.
Good luck finishing up the job. Play that trump card for all it's worth.
Edit: I guess that's all a little Captain Obvious, nothing you don't know. Good luck finishing it up.