When considering which new job opportunities to pursue, there are three key factors that we look at, as listed below.   If a job does not meet each and all of these requirements there would have to be other very unusual circumstances for us to pursue it.

1. Client. Is this a client who we think there is a good chance of us having a productive long-term business relationship with? Or, of course, is it a repeat client?

2. Negotiated vs Bid. We almost exclusively prefer to work on negotiated jobs where we are hired early in the process, preferably during Schematic Design.  This gives us the ability to both plan our staffing and resources—and to somewhat control how the documents are produced to make the actual construction smoother. Timing and lack of workload may be possible reasons we might bend from this rule.

3. Monadnock Capacity. We do not buy into the typical contractor creed of “never turn down a job - get the work and figure it out later”. We will only accept a job if we feel confident that we have the key staff people in place to handle the job, and that they are coming available when this job starts.  We do not pursue a job knowing we will have to hire new people to build it. Ever.

There are other factors that are considered, some of which are listed below.  Any job that meets the above qualifications is also reviewed for these items, though not all are mandatory like above:

• Type of Contract. We generally prefer a mix of CM-As-Agent (no risk, low fee), CM/GMP (more risk, higher fee), and lump sum (highest risk, highest fee) type contracts in our backlog. 

• Type of Project/ Funding Source. Like the above, our preference is to have a mix of privately funded and government-funded projects, so in the event of a collapse in one sector of the industry our backlog would not completely dry up.

• Project Risk Elements. Risk elements might range from constructability risks such as foundations or exterior wall designs that have a greater than normal risk of problems, or schedule risks such as likelihood preconstruction or design process will drag on longer than is profitable for the company.

• Location of job. We generally prefer to work in the 5 boroughs if we can and will generally prefer projects nearby other work that we have underway or planned.

• Strength of A&E team. If a project has architects or engineers who we think produce subpar documents and are difficult to work with this could influence our decision.

• Sub Capacity. If a project requires subs of a certain size or skill level for which we feel there is too limited a pool available for that may influence our decision.

• Size of Project. Generally, anything under 80,000 GSF does not make sense for us from a profitability/overhead metric, though we will always consider smaller jobs for a good repeat client or partner.  And jobs that are large and have a lower fee structure are not appealing if they will demand a huge amount of our staffing resources at long durations for relatively low returns.