As a GC, which materials do you let the subs purchase?

Question

I'm going to build a house.  When I worked as a construction manager for a homebuilder several years ago, we ordered the lumber, windows, doors, stairs/railings, garage doors, trim, cabinets, lighting, appliances, vanities, floors, paint, and other finishes.   We let the mechanicals (elec, plumbing, HVAC) provide the wires, tubes, duct, etc. for the rough-in stuff.  Any other material-management approaches anyone's taken that works well?

Bruce Woodruff · Answer

Everything directly related to that trade is expected to be supplied by that Contractor.

I.e, Electrician supplies all Romex, boxes, cans etc. as spec'ed by the customer or GC. Same for plumber, all pipe and fittings, etc..

The customer is expected to choose and buy the fixtures (in most cases), like lights, toilets, vanities and such. I usually would meet the client at a showroom such as Fergusons and help them choose fixtures.

I would supply the GC stuff....including all carpenter stuff because my guys did the framing and finish.

Jared Hottle · Answer

@Daniel Alfandre

This is the exact approach we take. Most all of our carpentry, paint and flooring materials we will buy up front to protect us, to ensure quality, and to get our 11% menards rebates lol. Also opens the door for buying and storing sale items or Restore purchases which probably saves us on average 1000-2000 per BRRR deal.

Peter Tverdov · Answer

A buddy of mine in NC does this and swears by it. I had my lumber supplier do a take off on a new home build and they whiffed on it.

Bruce Woodruff · Answer

Some of the big lumber yards will do this for ~$300, and deduct the money from your lumber package order if you use them. I never trusted them. Or the national companies that used to contact me to offer the same service.

What if they're off by 10%? 20%? They have no vested interest in being correct. I'd rather be the one making the mistake if there is one to be made.

Mike Smith · Answer

@Daniel Alfandre I do pretty much the same as @Bruce Woodruff.  My electrician supplies all the electrical materials, but I supply the fixtures.  On plumbing, I have my plumber supply the toilet, sinks, faucets, etc.

I looked into providing toilet, sinks, faucets to the plumber, but it saved me no money, so it wasn't worth the hassle.  My plumber does about 100-200 homes per month, so I think he buys the product so well that I can't beat his prices.  If you have a smaller plumber, you can probably save by providing those items.

I would be very careful about letting other companies take off your plans.  They get thrown 10x more plans to take off than houses that people buy product on.  So they normally spend less than five minutes per house doing a take off and can make enormous errors.  It's worth learning how to do take offs yourself vs blindly trusting a supplier to not make a mistake, because they will make mistakes.  Their mistakes cost them nothing and can cost you the entire margin on a build if there are very many.

Peter Tverdov · Answer

I do plumbing (all roughing) electric (all roughing and basic lighting finishes like canned lights, dusk to dawn on the outside or motion lights) HVAC everything. Countertop company provides and installs.

Everything else, we are buying material.

Sometimes with a mason they will do labor and material and I can live with that.

Mike Smith · Answer

@Daniel Alfandre As a more production oriented builder we try to buy almost everything ourselves and pay for the labor only.  The exceptions we call turnkey trades who provide their own materials.  Our turnkey trades are:

Plumbing

Electrical

HVAC

Painting

Flooring/Countertops/Tile

The less experienced your are, the more you will have to lean on turnkey trades.  If you can't take off roofing properly, you had better pay the roofer turnkey based off your plans.  If you short him 3 squares of shingles, 5 pieces of drip edge and some L metal, he won't work for you for long...

Chris Seveney · Answer

@Daniel Alfandre

Varies by location but when we were building items we purchased were:

Trim and base

Appliances

Siding

Doors and hardware

Paint

Most of the other items we let the trades carry for warranty / installation vs product issues

Daniel Alfandre · Answer

@Mike Smith @Bruce Woodruff What do you all think of paying a few hundred bucks to professional take-off/estimating service?  Any experience doing that?

As a GC, which materials do you let the subs purchase?

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