More Staking Questions

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0. Will never work for a GC again.  We have many times in the past.  Its simply not worth the headache of trying to do the work in combination with trying to establish a professional services contract.   

We have a few select smaller firms in our area that specialize in this area, I send all requests to them.

I understand many need or desire to work for a GC.  They are in the business of submitting bids regularly and losing most of them. Most on our side of the fence can't survive on that model.

@wa-id-surveyor Maybe I've been lucky, but the ones I've worked for so far have agreed to my terms and paid up.  My only real complaint is being in the dark on how much work I'm potentially taking on which is why I was asking these questions.

@bstrand You need to know when they are going to use your number of someone else's.  There is a day and tim when their input is expected by their client.  You need to find a way to learn when that is.  Perhaps provide your numbers to them with a dead date.  That is, after that day your numbers are withdrawn.  If your dead date is too soon and you are the best number, they will work you to give a later dead datel  IF that date works for you, great.  If not, add some days that you can live with.  Hanging on forever is a load of BS.

@holy-cow They always have a date where they stop accepting estimates from subs which they post, so I guess I could give them a dead date 1 day after that or something.  So not a bad idea.

It would be nice if they just posted who the winning subs were on their website or something though which would be simple.

@bstrand My standard letter proposal states that it is good for 30 days.  Nothing worse than someone holding on to one for a couple of months and then wonder why you can meet the old time frame.

It is likely that they will spend more on Porta-potties than they will on even the highest bidder for survey services.

The GC should know if they are the lowest bidder within a day or two of the bid opening date. Then comes the detailed contracting process, which may go on for several weeks, or more. It may evolve that the owner and the low bidder cannot come to terms, and another bidder will be asked to step up. Once a contract is in place time will be needed to order materials.  These can sometimes take several months to be delivered. Meanwhile, there is permitting which can hold things up.  Some operations must be done during certain seasons, so the calendar plays a role. And the GCs other subs may have prior commitments. So a week or a year can pass between bid opening and project kick-off. 

When kick off finally happens it's not uncommon for the preferred surveyor to be unavailable, so the next man up gets the call. That's the business.

For a small company, this is one more reason to avoid construction staking or avoid everything else.  The two do not mix well.  I did a Walmart project that had me onsite an average of every other day for nearly six months.  It was hell attmepting to get boundary jobs done in a reasonable time frame.  As sure as you set a meeting time involving one or a half dozen people on a boundary job, that time will be when you are getting the highest pressure to be at the construction site 60 miles away.

At the last place I worked they said in their contract boundary projects will be completed within 16 weeks. 😐 So I guess that's how you handle that problem

Fewer than one in twenty potential boundary clients in my world would have agreed to that thought.  Two to three weeks was the norm for us.  Some would drag out to a month or more due to circumstances.