Hire a Licensed Professional Concrete Contractor

When hiring a Concrete Contractor please ensure you cover your bases.

1. Make sure he is Licensed, Bonded, and Insured. By doing so the contractor will be bound to his contract and a warranty is implied through his insurance company. If there are issues, a bond is in place to warrant anything that may go wrong for typically from $7,500 -$12,500. If his work causes injury or physical damage to a neighbor or the rest of your property, you may tender his insurance company for a claim. If he is unresponsive, you may call the CSLB Contractors state license board.

2. Do not give anyone a down payment not even 10%. Rather offer them the payment or deposit on the first day. If they are in business they should be able to start your job without it. This way you ensure that they show up to do the job.

3. Ensure all payments are made per progress either through clearly defined benchmarks and or line items and never pay them for 100% of their completed work leave a little bit for them to come back to. Many times contractors have evened up with the owner and rather than finish the job and possibly take a future loss they simply collect their payments to date and cancel or discredit the contract.

4. As part of your contract you should request a conditional waiver from any suppliers delivering materials as well as any suppliers that have sent you a preliminary notice. Always pay the contractor with 2 party checks. For example the name of the check should be written out as follows:               XYZ Construction and ABC Supplier

This method will assure you that the supplier gets paid and the contractor is properly paid through a deduction of payment. The balance of the invoice or contract may be paid directly to the contractor.
If the contractor does not pay them you can assuredly expect a lien on your property.
*** I will discuss liens and waivers another time.

5. Ask for working references. Ask them to give you a list of jobs they are working on, then just show up and see what his jobsite and work looks like. If you don't like it. Don't hire them.

6. Although not a science of sorts....Go with your gut feeling based off the reactions you get when you request the above 5 items. Don't be pressured to do anything and think through the positives and negatives of all the contractors bidding.

7. The lowest price isn't necessarily the best price. You will always pay for what you are getting and time and time again it is the same scenario. Your bids should be fairly close. If one of them is much lower chances are something is missing or be ready for a whole lot of headaches.

Thank you for reading through how to Hire a Concrete Contractor.

-Giulliano J. Prieto
* Concrete Expert *