Questions
Questions
Grouped by the kind of question you arrived with. Questions specific to a package of work are on that package’s own page, and questions about coverage and gaps are on the bid coverage page.
Q1Questions
Getting started
What is the first thing I should do?
Three things, before design. Establish what the building has to do, establish whether the site is entitled, and get a geotechnical report. Those decide more about the cost and the schedule than any design decision that follows, and the report in particular is the cheapest large piece of information available to you.
How early can you be useful?
Earlier than most owners think to call. The most valuable conversation on a commercial project is the one before there is a drawing, where somebody tells you honestly whether the building you have in mind fits the budget you have on the site you are looking at. That costs nothing.
I am holding bids from another contractor. Can you look at them?
Yes, and this is a genuine offer rather than a lead-generation device. Read the exclusions blocks down the telephone and we will tell you which of the eight boundaries on the coverage page is open on your project. It takes about twenty minutes, it costs nothing, and it is useful whether or not you ever hire us. We do not retain the pricing and we do not share it — see the privacy policy, which has a section about exactly this.
Can you give us a number before there are drawings?
Yes, and that is what the budgets page is for. An order-of-magnitude figure built from published ranges, with the assumptions stated, is usually enough to decide whether to proceed and to take to a board. What it is not is a commitment, and we will be clear about which you are holding.
We have an architect already. Does that matter?
Not at all, and it is the usual arrangement. We build to other architects’ drawings routinely. What we would ask is to be brought in during design rather than at bid, because the things we can usefully contribute — constructability, long-lead procurement, and building the bid list early — are all worthless after the documents are finished.
Q2Questions
The buy
Why do you talk about buying rather than building?
Because on a commercial project, somewhere between 80 and 95 per cent of the contract value leaves the general contractor and goes to other firms. The building is built by about thirty subcontractors. What the general contractor does is buy those thirty subcontracts and manage the boundaries between them, and that is where your money is either protected or lost.
How many bids do you get on each trade?
It varies by trade and by month, and the coverage page publishes what the market typically supports. What matters is that we count it, tell you the count, and tell you what we are doing about the trades where the honest answer is one. Ask this of every contractor you are considering — a firm running a real process has the number to hand.
What do you do when a trade has only one bidder?
Four things, in order. Widen the net geographically, which costs mobilisation but restores competition. Repackage the scope so more firms want it. Negotiate openly with the one bidder on an open-book basis, which is weaker but honest. Or tell you the trade will be expensive and carry it as a stated allowance. What we will not do is present a sole-source number as though it had been competed.
What is scope levelling, in plain terms?
Three bids for the same trade are three different scopes at three different prices, and the lowest is frequently the one that excluded the most. Levelling puts them on the same basis — what each included, what each excluded, what each assumed — and then reads each exclusions block against the trades on either side of it, which is how a scope nobody bought gets found before anybody signs.
Can I see the bid list and the scope matrix?
Yes, and ask for both from any contractor. The bid list before it goes out, so you can see which trades have one or two names on them. The levelled scope matrix before award, so you can see where every boundary landed. Neither request is unusual and neither should meet resistance.
Does a lower bid mean a cheaper building?
Not reliably, and this is the single most expensive misunderstanding in commercial procurement. A number eight per cent lower may have thinner coverage, fewer allowances, no stated contingency, or simply unlevelled scopes — in which case the gaps are still in the project, unpriced, waiting. That is the same building with the risk moved onto you, and it arrives as change orders with a sole-source price on each one.
Q3Questions
Money and contracts
How is the work billed?
Monthly pay applications against percentage completion of an agreed schedule of values, on your form or a standard industry form, supported by lien waivers from us and from subcontractors and suppliers. Detail in the payment and cancellation policy.
What is a schedule of values and why should I care?
The project broken into divisions, each with a sum, adding to the contract amount. Every payment is drawn against it, which is why it matters: one that is front-loaded lets a contractor be paid ahead of the work, and that is exactly the position you do not want to be in if things go wrong. Review it before approving it.
What is a mechanics lien and how am I protected?
In Colorado a subcontractor or supplier who is not paid can record a lien against the property even if you have paid the general contractor in full. What protects you is the waiver trail: conditional lien waivers with each application and unconditional ones once payment clears, from the contractor and from every subcontractor and supplier. Require them. Reluctance to provide them is informative.
Are you bonded and insured?
We carry general liability and workers’ compensation, and will provide certificates naming you and your project before the contract is signed. Bid, performance and payment bonds are arranged through our surety where required. This site does not publish a bonding capacity, because a figure on a web page is not evidence. A letter from the surety addressed to you, for your project, is — and it is available on request.
How do change orders work?
Priced and agreed in writing before the work is carried out, with no exceptions. Three things generate them: your changes, concealed conditions, and scope gaps. The third kind should not happen, because they are findable at levelling for roughly a tenth of what they cost later — and where one does arise despite that, we will tell you plainly that it was a gap rather than dressing it as a condition.
What is the difference between your contingency and ours?
Ours sits inside the contract and covers construction risk within our control. Yours sits outside it and covers scope you decide to add. An owner without their own contingency has no way to say yes to their own good idea at month eight, which is a genuinely frustrating and entirely avoidable position.
Q4Questions
During construction
Can our business keep operating during the work?
On an addition or remodel, usually, and it costs money and time — both in the estimate rather than discovered later. The governing document is the phasing plan: which areas come out of use, for how long, in what season, and what carries the business meanwhile. Interrogate that plan hardest when you compare proposals.
Who will actually be on our project?
A named superintendent on site and a project manager you can telephone. Ask for both names before you award, ask to speak to the superintendent rather than the estimator, and then ask their last three owners whether that person was genuinely there.
What happens when you find something unexpected?
Work stops on that element, you are told the same day in writing with photographs, options and a price, and nothing proceeds until there is a decision. Then it is a written change order. What we will not do is work around it and present it afterwards.
How do you handle a subcontractor who is failing?
Early and directly, which is one of the real arguments for caring who was bought in the first place. A trade awarded at a number nobody competed for, to a firm nobody vetted, is the one most likely to become this problem — and by then the options are all expensive. The answer to this question mostly happens months earlier, at the bid list.
What do we actually get at the end?
As-built record drawings, O&M manuals, collected warranties with their start dates, test and special-inspection records, the commissioning record where applicable, training, the subcontractor and supplier list, and a properly closed-out permit with the certificate of occupancy. Those are contractual deliverables, not courtesies. Closeout and what you receive.
Q5Questions
Choosing a contractor
Why is there so little about your company on this website?
Because almost nothing a contractor can say about itself is checkable by the person reading it, and because we were given very little to say — and chose not to invent the rest. The disclaimer carries a complete list of what this site does not claim, which is longer than most firms’ about pages. What is published instead is information about how commercial construction works, which is more useful to you and which you can verify against any contractor you speak to.
How do I check your licence and insurance?
Ask us for the licence details and check them with the issuing jurisdiction directly. Ask for certificates of general liability and workers’ compensation naming you, your property and your project, before signing rather than after. Do this for every firm you are considering, including us.
Why are there no project photographs?
Because a photograph proves nothing you can verify: not who built it, not what it cost, not whether the project went well. What we offer instead is an address you can drive to and an owner’s telephone number, which is a harder thing to provide and a far better test.
What size of project are you right for?
A commercial or institutional building where the budget is a real constraint and where several trades will be thin. A single-trade scope, residential work, or a project already bid and awarded elsewhere are all wrong fits, and the full table is on the work page. We will tell you when somebody else serves you better.
Will you tell us if we should hire somebody else?
Yes, and we do. A project far enough outside the metro that a local firm will buy it better. A scope too small to need a general contractor. A project where the drawings are finished and the trades are already bought, where our usefulness was two months ago. Saying so costs us a bid and costs you nothing, which is the right way round.
Q6Questions
This website
Why does the site look like a file?
Because that is what a commercial project is. Thirty subcontracts in a folder, each with a block at the bottom saying what it does not include. The manila ground, the struck-through scope and the register layout are all the same idea: this is a working document rather than a brochure.
What does the yellow mean?
One thing, everywhere on this site: absence. A scope nobody bought, a required field, an error. It is never used for emphasis and never applied to something that exists. The emphasis colour on this site marks nothing, literally — which is the argument the whole site is making, rendered as a rule.
Why is the bid coverage table not colour-coded?
Because a count is a number, and a number plus a noun carries the information exactly without a legend to learn. Thin coverage also carries the word "thin". The result reads identically on screen, in black and white, in print, to a colour-blind reader and to a screen reader. More in the accessibility statement.
Does this site track me?
In its present state it makes zero external network requests: no analytics, no pixel, no CDN, no embedded map, no chat widget, no cookies of its own, and therefore no consent banner, because a banner asking permission to set nothing is theatre. It is built to load a Microsoft Advertising conversion tag when we run paid search, and the cookie policy is generated from the same setting that switches it on, so it cannot say the wrong thing.
Q7Elsewhere
Questions answered on other pages
If it is not here, telephone and ask
A question that is not on this page is usually a better question than the ones that are. We would rather answer it in four minutes on the telephone than have you guess at it from a website.
Pinkard Construction Co. · 9195 W 6th Ave, Lakewood, CO 80215