Finding Mechanical Projects To Bid

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Welcome to today's quick tip Tuesday episode on how to locate commercial mechanical projects to bid. Are you currently a residential subcontractor who wants to get into the commercial sectors? You could expand your current HVAC plumbing or electrical business, or are you just starting up your own venture? And you want to go straight into the commercial division, but you're not sure how or where to locate the projects to bid on. Many years ago, when I want to make a move from residential to commercial sector in my own heating company, I remember the frustration of finding those projects to bed on. I never knew what projects were available when they were bidding or even what general contractors were taking the bids. So if this sounds like you listen up, because I have a couple of quick tips that can save you time and frustration with locating what you're looking for, one of the first steps I would recommend is reaching out to the local commercial general contractors in your area. Often, times wrote. In a relationship with that local contractor can give you tons of insight into some of the upcoming projects and chances are you already know a couple, so reaching out to them to schedule a visit in their office really shouldn't be that difficult, would it? Now, in your meeting with them, be honest and up front that you're looking to build a name for yourself in the commercial sector for your mechanical business and just wanted to ask them a few questions about the process and how you can deliver a proposal, they find appealing. Now be prepared and have some questions ready to ask them. Don't try to think of all the questions in their office. And don't assume that they would just volunteer all the info you need to obtain. They are taking the time to meet with you. So be sure you lead the conversation with things you do know about the commercial sector. Maybe pick a recent local project that you know they were involved with, and ask him how things went with commercial contractors on that project, and even if they liked the commercial contractors that they had on the project, asked him what could have been better. Keep in mind, the general contractors were always only wanting one of two things either the lowest bid or the best company for the project. So you need to decide if you want to be the highest quality contractor in your area, or do you want to be the cheapest? You can't be both. And another way, which is probably the best way today to locate projects, is through an online plan room. Now you have several to pick from today, and they are not created equal. Some of these will offer minimal details, and others give you a virtually all the details you would ever need. So one important thing to note is that you want to utilize an online plan room. Be sure they keep the current documents. I have experienced in the past many plan rooms that may have the initial documents available, but they don't really keep up with the Addenda as they're released. So do some homework on the plan rooms you're considering and find one to work with that is a good fit for you and your budget. Now, most all plan rooms are gonna have a monthly fee. So before you join before you sign anything, make sure you know what you're getting. Now here's a word of caution. When you bid a project, you are responsible for knowing all the details and having all the current documents to prepare an accurate bid total. If you are not sure if you have all the recent documents, be sure to call a Bidding GC probably the day before, verify how many addenda have been released. And if they tell you their son that you don't have, go ahead and ask him to send him to you. I'm sure they'll be happy to do that now. I do not endorse any online plan rooms. I don't prefer one over the other, and I don't make any money if you click any of the links in my show notes and go into these websites. But I'm gonna list a few just in case you don't know who they are. There is i square foot dot com bed clerk dot com smart bid dot co plan hub dot com bid plan room dot com. Those were probably the biggest and most well known. There's several others. Thes air, Just a handful. There's a near endless amount of options out there. If you just perform a quick search for the term online plan room some of the plan rooms you find our regional some of the other plan rooms that are larger. They're gonna offer nationwide search results for projects so the cost can range from a couple hundred bucks for a local area to thousands of dollars per region. So be sure to know what you need and what you will get. So I recommend you ask each one of them to send you a quote unless you know exactly what that quarters go to include. How many different search areas you can get, how many different search results you can get per search. Sometimes they charge your per project search term or or different regions of the country. So ask him exactly what they're going to give you for your money and then decide on the one that's best for you.