You Might Be Surprised By My Choice
I have said this hundreds of times, and I have even testified to it once or twice: I would prefer a competent criminal contractor over an incompetent contractor. Time and again I have seen incompetent contractors cost Owners more than a criminal would ever dare to steal.
I am working on a project now where the Owner signed a contract with a general contractor for $850,000 to construct a new home. He chose this contractor because the competing bid was $20,000 higher. Through negligence in the contracting process, negligence in the building process, and negligence in the billing and change management process, the project cost the Owner more than $1.2 million. The project changed VERY little from the time the design was completed by the architect to the time the project was completed. And yet the cost increased more than $350,000.
So if the Owners would have chosen the other contractor for $20,000 more, they would have been FAR better off, even if he was a criminal who stole $100,000 from them at the end of the project. Think of that. I'm not kidding.
