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Went with the cheaper dirt crew on the Oak Street lot and now I'm paying for it
Back in March I had to pick between two excavating bids for a small commercial pad on Oak Street in Peoria, and one came in at $18,400 while the other wanted $23,900. I went with the low bid to keep the client happy. Big mistake, because they hit a utility line they never marked and we lost 6 days of schedule fixing it, which ate up way more than the 5 grand I saved. How do you all weigh low bids against a guy's track record when the owner is pushing hard on budget?
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wright.michael18h ago
See I look at it the other way. The 5 grand gap between those bids should've been your first clue something was off, because a crew that knows what they're doing prices in the utility locating and the risk. Going cheap on dirt work means they're either skipping the mark-out or they don't have the experience to read it right. Next time tell the owner the low bid costs 5 grand less today and maybe 20 grand more by June, and let him decide with that number in front of him.
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