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The Breinholt Standard -

          Knowledge & Experience

There are a lot of subcontractors out there that will try to bid and do work on any type of project that they are asked to do, even if they don't know how or have the experience to do so.  The other problem is that some subcontractors have a lot of experience doing just the type of job that you have and they are constantly cutting corners, or taking short cuts, doing illegal things, avoiding observance of regulations among other things.

 

Those two mindsets could very easily get a general contractor or property manager/developer in a pickle once the job gets started and then they find out all this bad stuff happening on their jobsite.  Then what?

 

Don't put yourself in that situation.  You really owe it to yourself to find a company that you can trust.  Take the time to find out about a contractors experience.  Find out what their limitations are.  Find out if they are doing illegal things.  Find out if they keep their customers and themselves out of trouble.

 

Here is how you do that.

#1 Find Their Specialty

 

There are very few demolition subcontractors that do all types of demolition projects, at all sizes, in all industries, and in all situations.  And even if they do work in all those situations, they may not do all of them very good.  So find out.

 

  Step One: The first way to find out is to ask the subcontractor.  If they say they do everything, then you should ask them about specific situations and if those are projects that they prefer.  If they keep saying yes to everything then it is time to make up something wild. 

 

A sign of a professional is that they will admit to areas that they do not prefer to work in and areas that they are not as good at compared to other areas.  They will know their limitations, and they will stay away from their limitations so that they can keep doing the things that they are best at..

 

  Step Two: Ask them if they self perform all of their work.  Do they directly employ the people that will be working on the job, and will they be doing the work using equipment that they own?  If they don't, then it is a good sign that they don't usually do that type of work.  Of course every contractor is going to have some little things that they might need some help with from an even more narrow specialist, but the sub you are checking out should be doing the vast majority of their work with their own forces and their own equipment.

 

You would be surprised how many specialty contractors bid on work for a big chunck of their revenue and is all they are doing is hiring some other low quality subcontractor that has a bad reputation and is cheep to do the work for them.

 

Some demolition contractors specialize in just interior demolition and have no equipment or people on their staff that are qualified to perform building demolition, yet they still bid on and are awarded building demolition projects.  When they are awarded the building demolition project they try to scab together a crew somehow, or they hire some other subcontractor to just do it for them.  So you thought you were hiring one contractor, but you are really getting someone else that you have no idea who they are.

 

  Step Three: Ask to see the list of current jobs they have that are underway.  In some circumstances they might not have the type of project you are considering them for going on right at that moment, but even in that situation don't you think they should be able to give you the name and phone number of several customers from projects they have completed within the last month or two? 

 

Visit their jobsites.  Call their customers.  Find out what is really going on with them and their jobs.  This isn't too difficult of a thing to do and won't take very much of your time.

 

 

 

We will be up front with you.  We are not the best demolition contractor in all situations.  But we are the best for a lot of different situations though.

 

Breinholt Contracting specializes in full building and structure demolition, in selective structural demolition, in full interior demolition/ strip outs, and in some types of selective interior demolition.  We generally work in all industries.  The majority of our work is done in Maricopa County.  We frequently do work in areas like Tucson and Prescott.  We travel to other areas of Arizona,  western New Mexico, and southern Colorado for larger projects.

 

We do very little work in the area of small strip mall tenant improvements, or small residential selective interior demolitions.  We do not work in operational retail facilities.

 

We own 99.9% of the equipment we need to complete all of the work that we do, and we do the work with 99.9% of all our own employees!  There are items that we need to lean on a subcontractor from time to time.  This would include larege amounts of concrete or asphalt cutting, asbestos abatement, and sometimes we need to rent an extra truck or two to help balance our trucking schedule. 

 

 

 

#2 Look for Evidence of Pour Quality

 

Is it possible to have pour quality on a demolition job?  Absolutely!  You might think that is hard since all of the work that we do ends up at a dump, so let me give you some examples.

 

Almost all demolition jobs have items on the site that are supposed to remain and be protected in place.  These items of personal property can become damaged during the demolition, which is pour quality work. 

 

Wasn't there a tree here that was supposed to stay here?  This driveway wasn't all cracked before the job stated, was it?  Why is there dirt all over the street?  Why is there a huge hole in the side of our neighbors house?

 

Don't catch yourself asking those questions.  Those are all issues associated with pour quality on a demolition job.

 

There are also even bigger issues of quality and pour workmanship.  Does the demolition contractor you are considering have a history of NESHAP violations?  What about dust violations?  What about OSHA investigations or a bad safety record?  What about a history of changing their company name, or getting their contracting license suspended or revoked?

 

Yes these are all signs of pour workmanship, and pour qualify.

 

NESHAP & Dust Violations

The NESHAP is related to asbestos, and is the program for protecting the public and workers from being exposed to asbestos. If your subcontractor violates NESHAP regulations, this could get that subcontractor in trouble, the general contractor in trouble, and the property owner in trouble.  Maricopa County publishes information about enforcement and violations related to asbestos and dust regulations, so you can see for yourself how much money contractors and property owners are being fined.  You want a contractor who knows the law well, and who will protect you from getting in trouble.

 

Complaints With Registrar of Contractors

When consumers of construction services are mistreated, and the contractors do not deliver on what they are contracted to do, the consumer can file a complaint with the registrar of contractors.  These complaints, and other similar complaints show up on the record of the contractor.  A contractor can also have their license suspended or revoked for many reasons, and you can see the history of all this on the AZROC website.  Go to the website and look up a contractors license number and find out all the things they have been punished for.....or see how clean their record is.

 

Search The Contractor on the Internet

This might seem obvious, but not enough people do this.  Do a search for your contractor and see what pops up.  Do a search for asbestos violations in Maricopa County and see what pops up.  Sometimes by doing this you might only find a bunch of business listings and advertisements....but you never know.  You might end up finding an article like this one.

 

Visit A Jobsite

Ask your demolition contractor you are considering of the address you just finished.  How does it look?  Some quality issues that you might be able to see include visible trash or large chunks of concrete mixed into the dirt; the site not being graded at all with lots of dirt piles, etc.; the street or parking lot having a lot of dirt tracked out onto it among other things.

 

Safety Track Record

Unfortunately, the safety record of a contractor is not readily available on the internet anywhere.  But in an earlier email we discussed how to tell if a contractor has a good safety program, and if they have good safety results.  This all goes into part of the process in determining the competency and experience of a good contractor.

 

 

So do your homework on our competitors, and on Breinholt and see what you find out.  I guarantee you will find all positive information about Breinholt Contracting.  When it comes to regulations, compliance, understanding the laws, protecting our customers and protecting our good name, Breinholt is the best. 

 

The Breinholt Standard

 

We have been the leaders in the demolition industry since 1972, and have completed several thousand demolition projects over the years.  Every year we successfully complete over 100 demolition projects ranging from the demolition of a small single family residence to the demolition of a shopping center, or apartment complex, or a casino, or an air traffic control tower.

 

You can call us and get a list of all of the projects we have completed over the past several years.  And, you can call us to get a list of all the projects we are currently working on.  You can view a sample of some highlight projects by visiting our projects page on this website. 

 

However, now you know that even with doing all of that work, we might just be doing a lot of low quality work and all kinds of shady activities.  We promise though that if you do your research on us, you will find nothing on us that would make you think we are doing low quality work.  We work hard to make sure that we are in good standing with the Registrar, the Corporation Commission, the IRS, the Labor Bureau, NESHAP, the EPA, the County, our customers, our vendors, our bank, our insurance underwritters and so on.  We work very hard to protect our customers and ourselves from trouble, and that is by doing very high quality work and always doing the right thing.

 

If we are not already working on an proposal for your next project, call us today and ask to talk to an estimator.  We would be honored to add you to our list of thousands of happy customers.

 

 

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