Managers Helping Contractors Help Managers by Arthur Raybold

In the press to obtain bids from  paint contractors for HOA boards, managers often forget to provide contractors with three important tools and often forget to establish rules of the game for boards, contractors and paint manufacturers. Giving some attention to these details will save time and money and produce a better quality job.

Requesting a paint contractor to bid on an HOA without benefit of a specification written by a paint manufacturer will result in  radically dissimilar bids, a job whose quality has no benchmark and therefore no recourse, and slim chance for a meaningful warranty without a paint manufacturer's participation. The board will waste time trying to assess bids with widely disparate numbers. The low bidders will exercise their creativity in cutting corners so that they may realize a profit.

Bidding without specifications is like playing tennis without a net.  Quality painters want to play by the rules and a well written specification enables a contractor to cover all the bases, provide quality and be competitive.

A manager should also provide contractors with sufficient time to provide a quality bid. It is common for managers to ask for numbers within a week of the original request. A typical estimator spends his or her day meeting with foremen, attending job walks, doing take-offs, monitoring the quality of his teams' work , responding to telephone calls and sitting before the computer, under pressure, trying to complete bids on time.

Without question, estimators will produce more competitive bids in direct relation to the amount of time they are given to do them. If a contractor has 5000 jobs in his or her data base which he or she can use to compare labor and material costs on a similar project from the recent past, the less need to add fudge factors against the unknown. Under pressure, an estimator will not have time to talk to his or her paint representative to determine how to save dollars on products nor will estimators have time to determine if a less costly and/or more productive painting crew can be found for this job at a certain time.

Fifty per cent of all bid requests are not accompanied by site maps. The site map is a huge time saver: First, it acts as a local Thomas Guide; next, it is a tool in determining the scope of the work; also, it may tell the advisor that there are 20 two bedroom units, 30 three bedroom units and so forth; strategically, it enables the estimator to plan a systematic approach to the entire painting process on a week by week basis. An estimator and a foreman with goals are going to be more productive and profitable (and therefore more competitive) than their counterparts with no goals or plans beyond each day.

Moving on to the "rules of the game," managers would do well to check references visually, not simply orally. Many references are going to say positive things because it takes more time and effort for them to explain what they did not like. References do not like contractors calling them back, accusing them of losing jobs for them. There is nothing like going out into the real world and looking at the results of a paint job on a property similar to yours. You only have to do it every 5 or 10 years, depending on whether it's wood or stucco.

Job walks should begin on time. Why should four paint contractors have to wait 20 minutes for the fifth contractor. Imagine how those contractors feel when the tardy one receives the contract. Managers and estimators have a lot in common-too much work, too little time.

Finally, one paint manufacturer's representative is sufficient per job walk. Recently, I observed as many as three representatives on a job walk. Are they acting as chaperones for Neanderthal painters or is each a specialist, one for wood, one for stucco and one for iron? With this many extra people, you experience sotto voce conversations that detract from the business at hand.

We are all interested in saving time and money and, in the process, producing a quality job. If managers will set the tone for job walks and provide contractors with sufficient time to bid, specifications and site maps, economies will be experienced by HOA's.