Speaker 1 (00:00):
<Silence>
Speaker 2 (00:08):
Hey, welcome back to the K-Cup episode 18. That includes all the general contractors Baton Rouge. We’re on part three of the five part series, the business of being a General Contractor, and we’re talking about the pre-construction phase in part three, so we’re moving right along. We’re, we’re still not quite there to building something, but we’re taking care of some serious logistics today. So let’s go ahead and get into that. John, we’re gonna talk about, you know, what everyone loves to talk about when they’re a builder. That’s the permitting process, <laugh>. So let’s just dive right in and tell us a little bit about the permitting process. Maybe you can kinda you know, show the contrast between, you know, the, the public bid situation, how the permitting process is handled there, versus what we really prefer to do, which is the design build, private work side of things. And just tell us about how that goes and, and some of your experiences with it. Now be sure ang listen up general contractors Baton Rouge.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
Yeah, I mean, generally speaking, you know, the permitting is it falls a little bit outside of the general contractor. I know that we really like the design build, you know, type projects or even just collaborative where we’re working with maybe an honors architect or whatever. Yeah. So, so we do get to, to dabble in this permitting process a little bit. But I mean, largely we lean on our architects and engineers, you know, to make sure code’s being met to make sure mm-hmm. A lot of the general stuff is, is being met. Yeah. and we, you know, the way we do it here in our methods is, you know, we’ll, we’ll hire the architect, and that kind of comes their portion of the project, you know, outside design. They’re also taking care of securing a permit. Yeah. And, and getting all that ready.
Speaker 3 (01:48):
Now there are times where, you know, maybe we’re working with an architect that’s from out of town. I can think of recently a project that we had where, you know, the owner had kind of an outside architect and brought ’em in. They wasn’t real familiar with our, you know, with East Baton Rouge mm-hmm <affirmative>. We kind of became the go between and, and, and really kind of got involved a lot more than we typically do. Yeah. And, and getting the permit and, you know, getting all the documents submitted, you know, whether it’s fire marshal and, and all the other things that came along with it. Yeah. can be quite a, a little tedious process mm-hmm <affirmative>. But typically, you know, here in our company, we lean heavily on our architects to kind of take care of that, that initial permitting phase, if you will.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
Yeah. So talk a little bit about the difference between public work and private work and how that the permitting thing affects, you know, how you roll out a project. And, this should be of importance to general contractors Baton Rouge so listen up guys.
Speaker 3 (02:46):
Yeah. So generally speaking, on a public work, we just, everything’s, either everything has been submitted prior to mm-hmm <affirmative>. Or basically we just dropping off a big lump sum set of plans and stuff that’s ready to go. Yeah. And and at that point we just paying for the permit you know, where it becomes different on this side is we’re kind of going through the whole process, the whole lengthy you know, submittals from the very beginning. Yeah. Maybe even as early as like planning and commission to where, you know, you’re just getting the site approved for this type of work. Yeah. so that would be the, the big differences, you know, the public side, we’re not real involved in, in the permitting process. We’re basically paying for the permit. Yeah. You know, if we wanna call it a design build or just a collaborative effort where we’re working with an, you know, an individual and an owner, an architect mm-hmm <affirmative>. Then, then we may be more involved in the, in the process, and which means that the project’s probably gonna start later down the road. I mean, a public good job, we typically start in those things fairly quick. Yeah. where, you know, this, if you’re going through the whole, specifically, if we’re starting at the zoning process Yeah. It can be a number of months before, you know, this project’s actually ready to kick off reconstruction.
Speaker 2 (03:57):
Yeah. So that’s a heads up to any, anyone watching this that, you know, wants to potentially be a contractor and especially general contractor Baton Rouge, is that private side work does have a lot of upside for the contractor. But this is one of those few areas where it can actually be a challenge and it can be a big delay in revenue ad because that project may not kick off for, you know, months. Yeah. Depending on how hard it is to get a permit for the project. So, right. That’s something you definitely want to be planning ahead for when you’re working on your, your schedule during this, this phase of planning for the job and everything. So what do you do as far as talking to the project owner and then dealing with subs and, and explaining all this stuff as far as scheduling goes?
Speaker 3 (04:46):
Well, you know, to your point that you were making one positive about the kind of process that this takes, you know, on the, on the private side of things is you can really kind of start to understand your work, your workload or your pipeline, you know? Yeah. If you have a few of these going, then you know, in, you know mm-hmm <affirmative>. Three to six months or whatever it is Yeah. That you have a couple of projects that are going to hit, and you, you can really start to understand your pipeline Yeah. To where if you’re just primarily a public contractor, you almost never know, like, you’re just waiting on the next private job to hit. So Yeah. While that kind of is a negative, it’s also a positive somewhat. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:24):
You get to do a little planning. Yeah. I would imagine this applies to general contractors Baton Rouge as well.
Speaker 3 (05:26):
And as far as, as far as, now the question was how do we relate this to the the project owner
Speaker 2 (05:31):
Yeah. And the subs. You gotta kind of coordinate all that because you’re, you’re, you’re, you don’t really know when it’s gonna start. Yeah. So,
Speaker 3 (05:38):
So to speak. So, so we definitely, subs and owners can get a little antsy during this process because typically, you know, the owner’s ready for the project to get going, and the subs, likewise, since you’ve kind of brought ’em in and hooked their interest, they’re wanting to know when this job’s gonna start. Yeah. So there definitely are a lot of emails back and forth, you know, between the honor and us, and even sub saying, Hey, what’s the status of this project where we’re at? Yeah. So, I mean, the best thing that we can try to do in the beginning is just set the expectation for That’s it. Yeah. You know, how long this is gonna take. I mean, that can be a challenge to do. Yeah. I mean, if you’re working with an architect that’s very familiar with what the, you know, what the parish needs or what that entity needs, then it may go a little smoother, a little quicker.
Speaker 3 (06:20):
Yeah. If you’re working with a new architect, I mean, it may be multiple submissions, it could take some time. Yeah. but the, the, the easiest thing that we can do, or the best thing that we can do is try to set the expectation in the beginning mm-hmm <affirmative>. But also in a sense that really almost like, you know, we don’t know exactly. Like Yeah. You know, we can give you, historically it’s taken this long. Yeah. but just kind of set the expectation. And then the biggest thing is just communicate, you know, if you’re, if you’re communicating consistently, I think that goes a long way, are you listening up general contractors Baton Rouge?
New Speaker (06:47):
Yeah. So have you had any common, you know, challenges that, well, maybe common in that they’ve popped up more than once that, that you kind of keep an eye o open for when it comes to the permitting process?
Speaker 3 (07:01):
Yeah. I mean, for, from a contractor standpoint, the biggest one is kind of what I just alluded to, just nailing down a timeframe. Like Yeah. They wanna know how long it’s gonna take for their permit to be ready. Yeah. And that can be hard to predict. Yeah. so, so from a contractor standpoint, that would, I would say that that’s one of the biggest issues that I see you know, as far as from an architectural standpoint or engineer, I’m sure they could point out a bunch of key areas that you kinda get snagged on. Yeah. you know, but right off the top of my head, I, I would just kind of be throwing some stuff out
Speaker 2 (07:34):
There. Yeah. Yeah. They probably deal with setbacks, height restrictions, a DA compliance. Right. Different things like that in the design that we don’t Yeah. Have to mess with. Well, I mean, even
Speaker 3 (07:44):
Stuff that I can think of that we faced, you know, on recent projects, it’s just the way that the, the driveway actually hits the highway
Speaker 2 (07:50):
Parking. Yeah. Stuff like
Speaker 3 (07:51):
That. You know, there’s different, there’s different codes and different things, access that dictate that mm-hmm <affirmative>. And you know, how you cut your curbs and, and different stuff. So I’m sure, I’m sure all those are sticking points. Yeah, I would imagine a general contractors Baton Rouge would be aware of those nuances.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
For sure.
Speaker 3 (08:04):
And you know, I know there’s tons of variances out there, so you, there’s variances because there’s usually problems that can’t be stopped by code or whatever. So <laugh> Yeah. You know, I’m sure there’s,
Speaker 2 (08:13):
Imagine that
Speaker 3 (08:14):
Sure. There’s lots of little things out there that could could be talked about
Speaker 2 (08:17):
Here. Yeah. Okay. Good. Well, let’s, let’s move on from the, the drudgery of point permits, <laugh>, <laugh>, <laugh>, and move into our next area, which is very important, particularly in south central Louisiana. We’re dealing with site prep and soil testing. So the first point we want to talk about is, you know, when is site prep or site testing, soil testing, rather, is it required or just recommended? Like, what would be the, the variance there when you just really want to have it or you’re not concerned with it?
Speaker 3 (08:55):
Yeah, I mean, I think a lot goes into that really you know, if you’ve, if you’ve done some work on some sites that are right next door to this site or whatever, I mean, you may be comfortable saying, you know, we know what the dirt is here. We can expect it to be this. I mean, I think general rule of thumb for us is if it’s a new project, a new development, like we wanna see some kind of soil testing, we wanna see the site that we’re working on, for sure. We wanna see you know, what is that we’re dealing with. You know, I think generally speaking too, if there’s engineers involved, they, they’re gonna wanna know that so they can design properly. Yeah. so I mean, I think the quick and short easy answer to that is just general rule of thumb. Like, let’s, let’s get a soil report. Yeah. At, at the end of the day, it’s, it’s good insurance to make sure that you’re designing, you know, according to what, what the site’s being built
Speaker 2 (09:37):
On. Yeah. It sounds like money well spent. So imagine you know, you’ve done your soil testing and, and you’ve got the green light to start prepping, prepping the site, and you’ve run into something unexpected. What’s kind of the process there for dealing with that? Do you just don’t tell anybody and go ahead and, you know, get <laugh>, get your bomb beams in and everything and go ahead and get your concrete port, or, or do you do something else <laugh>? Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 3 (10:05):
You know what we would do, we, we would send an RFI to, you know, the engineer that we’re working with or, or you know, architect that we’re working with and explain the scenario. Yeah. And oftentimes, I mean, we, we have a really good site guy that we do a bunch of work with. I mean, he’s been doing this for years and years, ton of experience. Yeah. Oftentimes, we kind of submit a plan of action and they look at it and approve it and say, let’s do it. Mm-Hmm <affirmative>. And if they have any comments, they make them. But generally that’s the way we move forward. But we certainly wanna, for the record, make note of it. Yeah. Have an RFI out there, have a, have a, a plan moving forward that everybody’s kind of agreed up on. Yeah. but, but generally speaking, our, our, our site guys can offer a lot of insight and give a lot of good advice in those areas. And, and likewise, I mean, engineers have some good plans too to, you know, to mitigate those type of
Speaker 2 (10:55):
Situations. Sure. Yeah. It’s probably a combination of the two that can really come to, you know, a solution. And so the point is, is like if you’re, if you’re work working on site prep and you come in, run into a problem, don’t just, you know, try to cover it over or gloss over, you definitely want to address it. ’cause Those, those things can come back and bite you. Right. For sure. You know, the, the soil affects a foundation, foundation affects the whole building, so it could just snowball on, on you and turn into a big problem. So definitely an an area where you want to be diligent in. And of course, understanding these soil reports. I, I know I, that’s probably one of those things where you may not fully understand all the, you know, the aspects of testing, but you understand the results over time. You know, if you look enough of ’em and you see the results, you know, what results fall within acceptable parameters. And of course, the soil reports typically indicate that they’ll tell you Yeah.
Speaker 3 (11:51):
They dictate they’re, they have a, a really good you know, a really good way of, you know, dictating what needs to happen. Yeah. I mean, they make recommendations,
Speaker 2 (11:59):
Prescribe
Speaker 3 (12:00):
It, yeah. Yeah. How things should be done. Yeah. So, I mean, to your point, you may not understand all the specifics when it comes to, you know, the types of soil and that kind of thing. Yeah. But if you, if you’ve seen some solar reports, you know, they give some really good direction on, on how to proceed and, and what actions should be taken for, you know Yeah. Different parts of the project.
Speaker 2 (12:19):
Yeah. Yeah. The, the, the reports are usually pretty thorough and, and pretty informative. So that’s pretty like you said, easy to start seeing patterns over time and interpret ’em fairly well. So as far as budgeting, you know, how do you plan for, you know, potentially having a soil issue once you start construction? Because that could, sounds like it could be costly.
Speaker 3 (12:42):
Yeah. I mean, in the private world and in the negotiated projects, we, we always start those projects off with a with a known contingency to the owner, you know, that’s a dollar value kind of based on the size of the job or, you know, the type of the job. We may have a another you know, contingency, but yeah. We always start our projects off with a contingency. That’s, that’s kind of a known number.
Speaker 2 (13:05):
So that’s a fund for Yeah. It go dealing with a problem that comes
Speaker 3 (13:09):
Up. Yeah. It can go for any, any problem, including soil. I mean, soil would be one of the first ones that pop up. So yeah. You be using your contingency early <laugh>, but but you know, if there’s, if there’s if’s the psych conditions are iffy, then I obviously we’re gonna be pointing that out in the beginning that we could potentially run into some issues. Yeah. And, and maybe have a specific contingency just for that. Yes. but that’s, that’s the way we’d handle it. I mean, honestly, in the public world, it’s a lot different. I mean, you can’t have a, you know, you’re not gonna be very you’re not gonna be very competitive with a bunch of contingencies in there.
Speaker 2 (13:42):
Yeah, that’s right.
Speaker 3 (13:43):
So it’s almost like, even if, you know, there’s probably gonna be an issue, you kinda have to wait till it arises and kind of address
Speaker 2 (13:49):
It at that point. Yeah. Try to do a change order or something like that. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (13:52):
But, you know, when we can help it, we wanna, we wanna get those situations out there and have those contingencies, you know, upfront. Yeah. And understood. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:00):
Okay. All right. Well, there you go. That’s, that’s some key points for you know, site prep and soil testing. Definitely something that you, you want to do particularly on the commercial side of things. You know, the, the projects can get pretty costly, so you, you want to, you want to take that it’s cheap insurance and definitely get that done. So let’s go ahead and move into our last section here on pre-construction. And that is, we’re, we’re coming back to the subcontractor thing again. We, we know that when we are building the raw budget and early on in the process of trying to, you know, take this lead that’s now becoming a potential client, and we’re trying to put together a rough budget, we’ve consulted with some subs that we like to work with, and and we’ve gotten numbers from them, some raw numbers and stuff. But now it’s time to actually start thinking about contracts and issuing contracts and nailing these things down. So what’s the process for that as far as you know, deciding on who you’re gonna use, why you’re gonna use them, and then you know, what, what is left as far as vetting is concerned at this point?
Speaker 3 (15:14):
Yeah, man. So I think at this point of the con or this point in the process, we probably already know who we’re gonna use, you know, for most of the subcontractors. Yeah. Specifically you know, the larger scopes. We’ve already had all those guys involved in the process. We’ve already had ’em submitting budgets and those kind of things mm-hmm <affirmative>. So we already know kind of who we’re gonna use. And I mean, I think the vetting process would’ve happened through the years. Like, we’re, we’re not using new contractors on a project like this, that we’re, that we’re negotiating, that we’re working on. We’re, we’re using somebody that we already have a relationship with, somebody that we’ve already trusted. Yeah. So we know that after working with this company for a number of years, they’re gonna be able to handle this project. Yeah. In a good way.
Speaker 3 (15:57):
So that’s, that’s kind of how the vetting would’ve happened. Hmm. And as, as far as actually choosing the contractor and locking in, I mean, we would’ve looked at things like, is this, is this type of project good for that subcontractor? Yeah. You know, we work with these subs all the time, so we understand their workload. Yeah. Like, is this a project they can actually fit in their schedule? Yeah. So we use those kind of things to determine, you know, who we bring in to help start budgeting and start working on these projects mm-hmm <affirmative>. And then ultimately, you know, the guys that were, you know, willing to take part are, are typically the ones that they get the job and kind of move forward from there.
Speaker 2 (16:34):
Yeah. So when it comes to, yeah. You know, private work, like we talked about earlier with permitting and stuff like that, you’re at this point now, we’re trying to put together final schedule, stuff like that. And how do, how do you manage that? Like, you, we want our subcontractors to, obviously, we wanna make sure that their final number is gonna fit in with the design, because we’ve been doing that all through the process. Yeah. And now we have to schedule all this as well. So how do we coordinate you know, their final numbers fitting with the budget and then getting this this scheduling worked out and coordinating with the project owner and that project getting this thing rolling.
Speaker 3 (17:21):
So a, after we’ve kind of created that budget in the beginning, you know, with our subs, we typical, typically have a meeting with, you know, architectural team mm-hmm <affirmative>. The subs, and even the engineers if possible. Okay. And kinda, you know, explain to the engineers and architects, you know, how, how was this budget derived? Like Yeah. You know, if you look at the mechanical scope, like, what, what were we using? Were we using, you know, rooftop units? Were we using split systems? Yeah. Or we’re using mini splits, how do we come up with this budget?
Speaker 2 (17:52):
Getting some details down?
Speaker 3 (17:53):
Yeah. So that, so that the engineer can design around the idea and the budget that we already have. Yeah. in lieu of just turning ’em loose and, and then us having to reprice it and it not being anything close to, you know, to what we kind of were thinking.
Speaker 2 (18:08):
Yeah. Did we take a last look at value engineering at this point? Yeah.
Speaker 3 (18:12):
I mean, you know, a lot of times if the subs kind of involved in the beginning, that’s almost the value engineered part of it because they, they kind of, they don’t really over design it. They kind of design it according to the way they’re used to doing things in the field and things that’s worked. You know,
Speaker 2 (18:28):
Something that’s gonna meet your
Speaker 3 (18:29):
Requirements, got a track record of working. Yeah. But also meets all the, all the, you know, requirements as far as coding, that kind of thing. Yeah. So, I mean, I think that that’s kind of what we do when we bring that sub in, in the, in the early phases. We, we kind of value engineered at that point. I got you. To get the, you know, to get the best product for the best cost.
Speaker 2 (18:47):
I gotcha. Okay. Well that sounds good. So hope you’ve enjoyed this. This is part three of our five part series, you know, on the business of being a general contractor. And this was the pre-construction phase. So our next step forward is we’re gonna actually get to build something now that we’ve done, you know, the first three parts just dealing with administration and logistics, we’re gonna finally get to actually get out there and get to the site and start breaking ground. So come on back and check out episode. I think we’re gonna be 19 for part four of the five part series of business of being a general contractor. And please, if you’re watching this or listening to this, please take two seconds and hit that subscribe button. It helps us get our information pushed out to more listeners. The more people that subscribe, the more YouTube is gonna push this out into other people’s feeds where they get the opportunity to discover the K-Cup. And we wanna start building this community around our industry, the commercial construction industry, and and all the different related industries that, that includes, like commercial real estate, commercial lending, architecture, engineering, and so forth. So please help us get that, the word out with the K-Cup, and we wanna continue to grow this podcast and bring value to y’all every week. So any part and shots for, for everybody. John?
Speaker 3 (20:11):
No. Let’s I’m ready for episode 19. I wanna build something. All right. Let’s let’s go build something.
Speaker 2 (20:16):
Sounds good. We’re gonna get our bags on. We’ll be right back. <Laugh>, adios, adios.
Speaker 3 (20:25):
<Laugh>. I don’t know what that means. Cut.