Choosing the right concrete contractor for your home and your project can be hard – whether that’s Australia or Houston concrete contractors. You’ll have to make a decision while juggling a whole load of questions and factors about the hire. That’s why we’ve put together a fool-proof and straightforward guide to choosing the best concrete contractor. You won’t have to wonder what you should be considering and what you should be asking during consultations.
For a 5-step process that never fails to find the best concrete contractor in town, keep on reading!
So, what should you consider?
When it comes to the factors you need to be thinking about before you hire a contractor, we’ve put together an easy acronym to remember: PROCE (like you’re writing process, but leave the last two letters out). Here’s a run-through of what all those letters mean and why and how you should consider them.
- Portfolio
The first thing you should do before you make a shortlist of the contractors you want to consider is to look at the kind of work they’ve accomplished before. This serves two purposes. The first is that it lets you know how many clients they’ve had before and the quality of work they have. This should be helpful in eliminating contractors with unattractive past work and to point you towards contractors who accomplish clean beautiful work.
The second thing this accomplishes is it lets you know if they’re the right contractor for you. Contractors can be skilled and experienced, but if they specialize in concrete stamping wood when you want someone who specializes in polished concrete, then it’s not the match for you.
- Ratings & Reviews
Another helpful way to know if the contractor is the best is to check what past clients and customers have said about them. Check online sources that gather customer reviews and read through them carefully. Ratings and reviews can tell you a lot about the contractors when they’re not trying to sell you their service.
- Operation
For any home project involving concrete, there should be a special emphasis placed on how organized the operation of the company is. If, for example, you are looking to have new concrete floors mixed and poured, ask about the specifics of that process. Also, ask who is in charge of tasks like getting permits and who is the point person on the team. If they can’t answer very simple questions like these, that should tell you that they do not have an organized operation.
- Cost
Cost shouldn’t be the basis of your entire decision, but that doesn’t mean it can’t still play a role in the decision-making. Make sure to ask for a clear quote on the services you want from every contractor you are considering. The quotes they give should be around the same estimates. If someone is offering you rates that are far below the average, that should tell you that they are trying to make a cheap grab of money with no intention of doing the job properly.
- Employees
It can seem superficial, but you need to know what kind of people work at the company before you hire them. Remember that these people will be in charge of changes to your home and that you will have to see and work with them on a near-daily basis. When you talk to them, evaluate how professional they are, how willing they are to answer questions and explain things, how knowledgeable they seem about the process, and how honest they’re being about it (if they’re just giving you fluff about how perfect the results will be, you will not want to hire them).
Remember: before hiring a contractor for your home, stop and think about PROCE.
