Ask away any construction related questions.

[Darren D. Ngo]

Good morning BiggerPocketers,

I have a degree in construction management and currently a construction Project Manager for a drywall company. I have done projects anywhere from a 42 stories luxury high rise, luxury retails, hospitals, school, and to smaller tenant improvements. 

 Please feel free to ask away any questions you guys have regarding to construction such as rehabilitation, scheduling, framing, drywall, taping, ceilings, soffits, material prices, budgeting, and/or anything. I will answer your questions to my best knowledge and if I do not know the answer, I will find out. 

This is my attempt in giving back to the BiggerPockets community since I have learned so much from here. Hopefully I be able to help this community out in answering questions.

Feel free to connect with me and ask private questions if you don't like to post your questions here.

Have a good day and good luck on your investments

-Darren D. Ngo

[Darren D. Ngo]

@David Faulkner

Hi David,

Contract is a gray area. I have done so many contracts and they all different. This is speaking from a commercial building stand point, for residential it might be a different ball game that I am not familiar with. The contract with exact specifications is much needed because it prevents the contractor to cheap out on you. I have a lot of examples but some of them are things such as; the contractor using cheaper materials, do not follow building code, and/or producing a lower quality product. Why do they do that? Well, to save cost and increase their profit margin. With a certain specification in the contract, now they have to follow that standard and that protects the owner from getting a lower quality product and also protect the contractor. Protecting the contractor in a way that, if they follow their contract and specifications and do what they are contracted to do, they are not not responsible for design/engineering failure. Instead of not having the contract or specification in place, they are most likely 100% at fault. 

Now when you said that some contractors refuse to sign a contract. To me those contractors are not well educated and their business is not in place. You should stay away from those contractors. There is not reason why that a contractor can't sign the contract. They have to right to modify the contract to where it is fair to all parties. And to come up with a solid contract, make sure that the wording are not broad, not a "boiler plate" language where it could be interpreted a million different ways.

Cheap, Fast, Quality. I would choose Quality and Fast. Quality so there are no problems that come back and haunt you. Fast because you need to deliver the project on time (in my perspective of a project manager) because if you don't, the owner will start losing their cash flow and they will hunt you down.  For me, Cheap is negotiable. Just based on how good you are at negotiating.

Hope that helps. Please do not hesitate to ask if you have other questions!