General Contractor Services

As varied as colors in the spectrum, choosing a general contractor can be a very pleasant experience or make you want to take up another profession where you never have to make a decision. Cheap but never on schedule vs. beautiful work but prices “Wow, are you kidding” to match seem to be the norm when taking on this task. Often times the GC “General Contractor” is not at fault when it comes to the TI (Tenant Improvement) costs that his/and yes often times HER price reflects. It stems back to the architectural firm and who they hire to design the MEP required on each project. The MEP or Mechanical, Electrical, Plumbing Engineer most often puts the biggest cost factors that any building will have. The MEP specifies what brand of fixtures your lighting will contain, the sinks in the exam rooms as well as the bathrooms, and how many outlets and where they will be placed with seldom the thought of how much all of this will cost the end user. At Practice Setup we let them do their job to say “how many” but that is when we step in to put things in a little better perspective. $ 200.00 can lights have very little difference than ones that cost $65.00 and outlets that will never be used aren’t always required when discussing this with the local building inspector but guess who pays for them if they are in the wrong place or being the wrong type. This goes on and on thru the project. Every item installed needs to be of quality but overpaying for everything doesn’t have to be the norm and contractors and architects who think that doctors have deep pockets are found everywhere. Still thinking of taking on this project by yourself?? Read ON…

GC’s are given a set of prints to work from and if the prints are wrong or drawn incorrectly in any respect, the favorite two words in any contractors vocabulary comes up “CHANGE ORDER”. This is when the client gets to pay three, four, five or more times the value of something that should have been correct the first time. At Practice Setup we take a little different approach than most Project Management Companies. We tell the architect and GC “You have had ample time to look at the architectural drawings and the building it’s self to spot any problems that may come up. NO CHANGE ORDERS!!! Certainly things do come up unexpectedly like the developer’s prints are in error as to where the sewer line is really located under the slab you now own or the SES Room (Holds all of the building’s main power/fire system/and communications delivery) is three inches out of plum and it happens to be a wall in your waiting room. But even in these circumstances Practice Setup has negotiated with the responsible party and our client is always free and clear of additional charges.