Like the general contractor for a house- all the subs need their money, and you need yours for riding herd on them and scheduling everything. And are you hiring these people or is the client?

You'd need a good knowledge of the trades involved to be able to bid accurately- plus knowing reliable tradespeople. And you need some wiggle room in there for the surprises that crop up.

I managed my own landscaping project a few years ago. The beds were done in May, except for the portions near the new/replacement sidewalk. This guy was willing to come back to finish after the pavers were in. Well, due to weather (and I think some truth stretching as to scheduling) the paver team didn't show up until August.

I released the landscape guy and finished the job myself. I felt sorry for him, since I'm sure he hadn't planned on renting a backhoe to get out old maple roots. (I did tell him they were there.)

I was agitated with the paver guy, but at least I wasn't between him and a client!

"A fair price for everyone concerned."

I don't think there is such a thing as a fair price. An honest price perhaps .. that is any price that two parties commit to and honor from the beginning of the project to the very end when the job is complete and the last dollars paid. Thats the best one could hope to achieve.

If everyone was paid what they deserved or were worth there would be no profit in business ... business runs at a profit because someone is paid less then they are worth and it's been that way for a very long time.

Taking on more then one hat on a project is an attempt and maybe a desperate one to keep up the profits but often ends up with someone being overworked and under paid.

Good Day ...

I have a specific viewpoint about this. I set my hourly wage at a price that I feel is fair for the work I do. I do not mark up subs, but I do mark up material that I arrange for the client. This is separate from the design work that is my provence alone. I collect estimates and communications initially go through me. I feel that it's my design work and I want it installed correctly although I am flexible. Some issues are deal breakers, some not.

When I administer a project, I get paid for the hours I work on it and I coordinate all of the other contractors. I also apply for all of the permits--but the client pays for them. Sometimes I have to interface with a general contractor, sometimes not. I make recommendations for people who are 'ace' at what they do. They work for the client, not me--I've only opened up the door for them. I've been working on a project for the past 2 1/2 months that has involved 4 other contractors, each with a specialty. I've billed the client for the hours that I've spent coordinating everyone's schedules and making sure that the work is completed in a timely manner and at a high level of quality. It's a complex project with a demanding client who changes h/her mind often. Without my intervention, s/he would have driven the contractors crazy. They have paid for more hours than is usual because I have had to be on the project site more often than usual.

When adminstering a project, setting a fair price isn't up to me--the contractors set their own prices. It is up to the client to accept or reject that price. I may communicate it to the client, but everyone works for the client--not me.

I no longer see myself as a Project Manager, instead I call my position Super Construction Nanny , or a baby sitter of adult mostly male contractors.

I just have to figure out where the 'corner 'of the room is in the landscape projects in order to assign a 'time out'.

" You've been a very very naughty excavator and you need a time out, go stand by the viber plate without earplugs for 10 minutes and think about that last lame arse excuse you tried to pull over on the client ". .... and no more phoney 'extra' charges either, we know you're making that stuff up. "

Did you forget Mich? They go down the hole, not in the corner.

The problem of fragmentation. Everyone wants to be in charge and why not. Why should you work for a wage while some other clown is pocketing the real money. It is valid.

But, the result is a zillion little companies that can only handle a certain amount of work either in volume or diversity of skill.

Since the majority of companies are like this, they set the price of work to some degree. You know, "the going rate".

Then you throw the rare company that manages its help well, manages its jobs well, has good customer service, and excellent quality control in the mix. It costs a whole lot more to pay your help, keep your help, chase down "readily available materials", and most everything else. It also has its limits of what they can do and little limitation on how many people want them. The result is higher prices and picking and choosing the work that they want to do to a large extent.

Where does that leave the customer? It leaves a whole bunch thinking that they are over priced, a whole lot passing over them for more competitive priced contractors, and some very happy to pay the extra dough to get what they really want. And yes, there can be a lot of waiting to get the job started. But, there are the majority that passes that company over for the "going rate" company. They wait. They have somethings turn out well, somethings turn out bad, some things that were worth it and some things that were not. They often post accounts of their dissatisfaction here. Yet, did they pass over the "over priced" company that would have satisfied all that was required in the job?

How does this relate to working with others? Well, bigger ticket jobs do not generally have a homeowner who wants to play general contractor and manage a bunch of subs. So, if you are going to be involved in bigger ticket landscape work you have to fit one of three roles. One way is to be the company that has the knowledge, reputation, and personality to grind the best out of your help and keep them around, whether they are employees or subs. Another is to be a good subcontractor that can keep up with the contractor that has the job. Still another is to be an employee of one of those.

We all like to think that we can grow by hiring more help and those to manage them, or hire subs to get done what we can not handle. But the reality is that you will never hold on to someone who can manage help better than you can. We are all limited in our growth not by how much equipment we can buy, or how tight the labor market is, but how well we can handle managing help. This is another very misunderstood subject.

Who among you wants to be pushed around by a general contractor? Everyone is referencing subs that they would hire, but who among you think in terms of being the sub? And then you wonder why the subs don't bend over backward for you.

Everyone sees themselves as having the right stuff, but truly few of us do.

Is Ink ready to have one of us be his general contractor? Will he come running when you have a design, a job sold, and just need him to follow your direction? Are you ready to do that for him?

Are we all chiefs? Are there no indians amongst us?

I want to know how you are as a sub, not how your subs are for you. It is like me screaming at the bad play at a football game as if I would be doing better if I had the shoulder pads on.

Is this thread like a call-in sports talk show where a bunch of fat old guys second guess the coaches, management, and players. I really wonder about that.

Tell me your role as a good subcontractor before you rip up those that work for you. And ask yourself why you are hiring a subcontractor. Is it because you can not hire and manage the necessary help to get the job done?

When we hire subs, aren't we saying that we are qualified to manage them (as in be their boss)? Does that not mean that if they are not performing, you are not being a very good boss? It comes right back to your ability to manage help, doesn't it!

Remember one thing. When you hire a sub, you are his boss. You are only limited by how well you do at being his boss, not how well he wants to cooperate with you.

If you are not a boss, you can not be effective hiring subs! Expecting eager cooperation from a sub just because you are paying him is not realistic.

Many forget contracting is a money thing .. a general contractor is more of a banker then anything else ... he very well could be the least qualified technician on the project ... but his financial investment in the project is the greatest so he / she rightly expects the greatest return and the right to manage the situation since if it fails they stand to lose the most ... if you find yourself as head of a project in the landscaping trade what really is your investment ?? ... that will dictate what is a fair return and your right to manage others time.

Several sheets of drafting paper may not entitle you to much of the profits .. sure your entitled to being paid for your time and lets say a finder's fee but if you are trying to command the profits and manage the show while others take the financial risk you are more or less dead weight in a financial sense and will overburden the job.

Good Day ...

Ok Laag. Point taken. In my limited experience, when a designer is brought on by the homeowner to manage/administer the project, the designer becomes the 'facilitator' of the project. If we, as designers, don't accept commissions that stretch our skills, we don't grow and become the same as JD Landscaper out there who plants the same 10 plants and uses the same paver walkway at every job.

Growing professionally always demands an evolving and growing set of skills and if, as a designer or a design/build contractor, you don't have the ability to construct a specfic feature, it makes sense to hire an expert sub. Of course you are their boss--as the administrator of the project, you and only you are bottom line responsible for the quality of the work done and presented to the client as complete. On the other hand, as a designer if you spec materials that you specifically don't know where or how to get shame on you. Ditto with what it takes to install those materials.

It takes time and trust to build up relationships with subcontratctors--just as it does with the relationship with the client.

If there's been some bashing of subs here, it's because this is a place where that can happen. Landscape Design can be a lonely profession with few opportunities to shoot the breeze and kvetch with your peers, so if a bit of complaining about subs and crazy clients appears here--it's the appropriate place.

There is no problem expanding horizons as long as you are capable of bossing the subs. That might take a lot more personality traits than it does experience or education. It is a very big limiting factor.

Some people can make them jump. Others can't or won't. Not to say that there are not bum subs out there. A good general is not hiring them and certainly not keeping them around. Again, it falls on being the boss type. A lot of that is nature and little of it is nurture.

We all see the guys and gals out there who might have no taste, little education, and yet make things happen. They bring less to the table, but they have that personality that makes them the boss who gets things done. It is where the rubber meets the road.

Designing is you meeting the clients needs. Selling is you having something the client wants and you getting them to match up that want with money - nothing real hard about that. Bossing laborers and subs is a totally different story. It is a battle of wills that never ends. You have to be able to out last them, or they win. Then all you can do is transfer your defeat by ascribing them as being useless. The truth is that they beat you (or me) and they are damn good at it.

All of us expect that when we are the employer, the employees will do as we want. It is a fantasy. That is where the real work begins and never ever ends. You can never buy your way out of managing your job. You can pay employees and you can pay subs, but that won't get the work done.

I am not sure laag, I know what you mean and I find being "The Boss" really tiresome but is it a pipe dream to expect some kind of cooperation? Are those who are not the "boss type" condemned to work for others or work alone?

No, they are condemned to take on the jobs that they can handle - the limitation that I keep mentioning. There is nothing wrong with working with that limitation. But, there is something wrong with not understanding it.

That is why there are so many people approaching retirement age taking the plants out of the back of their own pickups while waiting to break over that expansion hump that they felt was right in front of them for the last 25 years. That is why there are so many young contractors that keep buying more and more diversified equipment and offer more and more services and still only have three employees like when they first started and are making no more money. It is the failure to recognize that the problem is not the sub, not lack of equipment, and not that someone else inherited half a million from his grandmother and we did not.

Where that limitation is different for all of us, but it is there for all of us. The way around it is to recognize it and keep your work within it (keep the jobs smaller), or to join forces with someone else who extends that limit (a partner), work as a sub for someone with a higher limit (doing design work, or plantings, or hardscapes), or work as an employee doing what you do best and while others handle what you do not do best. All of these are good.

What is not good is to beat yourself to death being ineffective at what you are not good at.

laag, you paint an overly bleak picture. There are as many types of subs as there are bosses. Yo have to find the ones that match your style. There are bosses who get things done through intimidation, others who do it by complimenting. There are people that respond to intimidation and others that like a lighter hand.

I would be surprised if every sub, or even a majority of them, were the type that tries to get out of doing any work at all. And if they are, boot them to the curb. If you are stuck using one on a particular job because of availability and time constraints then you do need to be the kind of person that can kick some ass.

jb

In any business, management makes it or breaks it. This is nothing new. In any business, there are slackers and there are performers. In any business there are dream clients and clients from hell. In any business the trick is to find inspired management, excellent workers and clients who appreciate it. Anything else?

"Anything else? Maybe so...or maybe not? Why so lukewarm? Because to be honest, the process scares the bejesus out of me. Ok not halloween goblin in your face scared, but a little stressed. I per chance get this project, I NEED to have a general contractor I can rely on totally. To learn the ropes from, but at the same time have him realize Im the liason with the HO (whoops, not going there again) "home-owner".

Why the stress? I think you can easily figure that one out. My first project. In turn I want to be hands on with implementing the details of the design. I don't believe for a minute any of you have NOT been involved as part of the crews that installed the aspects of your design.

Im in that stage of building a reputation. I do not dare start off willy nilly and not be proactive. Thank goodness its a small scale project.

Thanks for approaching this topic .