Choosing Good GC Partners

As a trade contractor, you probably do most of your work for General Contractors, so you know there are good GCs and bad GCs. You also know that getting involved with a bad GC that is either incompetent, unethical, or both can ruin your entire year. Here are a few tips from our experts at Virtus Support Services to help you find the good GCs and avoid the bad ones. 



Evaluate Past and Current Contracts: A Request references from their customer base, ask to see their licenses, accreditations, and history, and check their references. Look for any public data on complaints or disputes. Ask for a referral from a contractor for whom they have done work. Next, search social media for independent, unbiased, and unfiltered feedback.

A contractor's license can be verified along with formal complaints in Florida at: www.myfloridalicense.com.   

Look at Their Current Backlog: It’s smart to make sure a General Contractor understands your scope of work.  One great way is to ask other subcontractors who perform well if they would recommend a certain GC or if they have others they recommend and ask to be introduced. Another way is to request to examine a potential contractor’s log of previous, current, and future work. 

Seek Partnerships: When looking for work with General Contractors, look for partnerships more than looking for work. Good GCs look to build solid long term relationships with skilled, reliable trade contractors. They know that effective relationships with quality subs may cost a little more at bid time than always going with the low-bidder, but it saves significantly in delivery.

Ask About Their Safety Practices: A General Contractor’s approach to safety will tell you a lot about their culture.  If they see safety as a hassle, rather than an important practice, it tell you how they view the workforce in general. Unsafe operations not only put the General Contractor in a dangerous position they can also leave you, exposed to liability and potentially force an inspector to close the job site. Review their safety protocols. Ask how they keep their job site crew focused on safety without compromise. Ask for their EMR; this gives insight into the subcontractor’s safety history. 

Inquire About Their Leadership and Project Managers: Does the leadership of the company have a track record of success? Do they have a solid construction background? Do their PMs tend to work for them for many years or do they come and go? Look for GCs where the leaders are knowledgeable builders that want to deliver quality and PMs stay with the company. 

Inquire About Their Bonding: If a General Contractor cannot get bonded or has a low bond limit, they are either very small/young or they have a history of poor financial management. Bonding sureties perform a lot of due diligence before issuing a bond. It makes sense to take advantage of their work in determining the credibility of a GC.

Ask About Quality Control: Ask the General Contractor if they have a written quality control program that is followed on their projects. If they do not have such a plan, it tells you how much they focus on quality and gives you some confidence their will be problems on the project.

Assess Their Contract Wording: It should go without saying that you should never work for a GC without a written contract. When reviewing a contract from a GC look for signs of them being fair and thorough.   If a contract has nothing but one-sided and unfair terms, that is a bad sign. Ask to have some of them changed and see how they react. Also, if the contract seems poorly written or a hodge-podge of terms from various contracts, this tells you they are not sophisticated with contracts. They have probably signed bad contracts with owners and that will flow down to you.

For most trade contractors, effective General Contractor relationships are critical to success. We encourage you to take this seriously. Apply the tips above and please avoid getting into contracts with unethical General Contractors. It seems that over half of the clients that come to us for help do so because they are recovering from a General Contractor that ripped them off.

At Virtus, we have a number of relationships with ethical, quality centric General Contractors and we are good at vetting new ones. If  you need help with this or any other business management for your construction company, please let us know. We are here to help.

Auth: G.M. Sieber and Gerald Green, Virtus Support Services

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