You have three bids on the kitchen table for clearing and a pad, and they do not agree with each other. The numbers are different, the scope reads different, and every one of them was handed to you by somebody friendly who said they could start soon. Here are the seven questions we would ask if we were in your seat, and what a straight answer sounds like on each one.
One and two: the license and the insurance
Ask for the license number first, then go look it up yourself instead of taking the business card at face value. A licensed contractor will hand it over before you finish asking. Ours is CGC1537340, it is on everything we sign, and we would rather you check it than trust it.
Then ask for a certificate of insurance, and ask for it to come straight from their insurance agent, not as a photo of a card. You want to see general liability and workers compensation, with your name on it as the certificate holder. That second one is the one people skip, and it is the one you will wish you had asked about if somebody gets hurt on your property. A contractor who hesitates on either of these has told you what you needed to know.
Three: who is actually running the machine
The person who walks your lot and shakes your hand is not always the person on the excavator. Ask who runs the machine, how long they have been running it, and whether the outfit uses its own people or picks up an operator for the job. Ask who is in charge on site when the owner is not there, and get a name.
On our jobs that name is Zach. He is our field superintendent, he runs the crews, and he is the one on your lot when the machines are moving. There is more about our crew on the site if you want to know who you are dealing with. You should get an answer like that from anyone you talk to. If the answer is a shrug or a promise to figure it out, the lot is going to be cleared by whoever was available that morning.
Four and five: where the debris goes and whose trucks carry it
Everything that comes off a cleared lot goes somewhere. Ask where. Trees, stumps, root balls and old concrete have to be loaded, hauled and taken to a place that accepts them, and hauling is usually the biggest single piece of a clearing bill. A contractor who cannot tell you where the debris is going either has not thought about it or does not want you to know. We haul to our own pit at 3125 River Rd in Navarre, and if you want to see where your trees ended up, you can drive by.
Then ask whether they own the trucks or hire them. Neither answer is wrong by itself, but it changes your job. An outfit with its own dump trucks and roll off trucks controls its own schedule. An outfit that rents trucks is waiting on somebody else's schedule, and when a rented truck does not show, your lot sits half loaded with the machine parked. Ask, and ask what happens when a truck does not come.
Six: what happens when it rains
It rains here. Not drizzle, either. Storm season on this coast will put more water on a bare lot in one afternoon than the ground can take, and a wet lot in the clay up around Milton, Crestview or Baker stays wet a good while after the sky clears. Sugar sand down around Navarre and Gulf Breeze drains and comes back to work sooner, but nothing is immune.
So ask what happens to your job when it rains. Do they pull off and come back, and how do they decide? Who tells you? Is the silt fence up before the rain gets there, or after the first storm proves it was needed? What happens to the schedule for the job they were supposed to start after yours? An honest answer here sounds like someone who has been rained out before and has a plan for it. A contractor who tells you rain will not be a problem has not been doing this here for very long.
Seven: references, and how they price the job
Ask for lots they finished, not just names. A finished pad in Freeport or Pace that you can go stand on, a cleared lot in Gulf Breeze where you can look at the edges, a homeowner who will tell you how the crew left the place. Then actually call them, and ask what went wrong, because something always does and the way the contractor handled it is what you are buying.
Last, ask how the price is built. Is it a lump sum for the scope on the page, or hourly with an estimate, or by the load? None of those is wrong, but you need to know which one you are holding, because three bids built three different ways are not comparable until you make them so. Ask what is not included. Ask what happens if there are more stumps than anyone expected, or the lot holds water where the pad is supposed to go. The answer that sounds like we will figure it out is the one that costs you later. The answer you want walks you through what changes the number and what does not, and it comes with a scope you can read.
None of these questions is a trick, and a good outfit will not be bothered by any of them. The ones who get bothered are the ones the questions were written for.
NOBL Sitework is a licensed general contractor (CGC1537340) working across Santa Rosa, Okaloosa, Walton, Escambia, and Bay counties. If you have a lot and a stack of bids, call us at 850-238-3307. We will walk the lot with you, answer all seven, and tell you what we see.
