Every owner wants the lowest number. The trouble is that the lowest number is usually the one with the most left out of it.
A general contractor bid is not a price. It is a set of assumptions about scope, allowances, and schedule, expressed as a price. Two contractors can bid the same building and land a million dollars apart, and the gap is rarely efficiency. It is what one of them chose not to include.
What you are actually buying
A general contractor holds the subcontracts, controls the site, manages the trades, and is responsible for delivering the building on time and on budget. That is the visible job. The real product is cost certainty. A good general contractor tells you what the building will cost and then delivers at that cost. A weak one gives you a number that drifts the moment work starts.
The difference between the two is not visible in the bid. It shows up six months in.
How to read a bid
When you compare general contractors, read past the bottom line and ask what is behind it. Is the scope complete, or are there gaps waiting to return as change orders. Are the allowances real, or set low to win the job and trued up later at your expense. Is the general conditions line honest for a project of this size and length. Does the schedule account for permitting and long-lead items, or assume nothing goes wrong.
A bid that is cleanly the cheapest is usually the one hiding the most. The question is never just the price. It is what was removed to reach it.
What track record actually tells you
A bid tells you what a contractor is willing to commit to. It does not tell you whether they can deliver it. That comes from track record: how many projects a firm has finished, over how many years, and across how wide a range of work.
This is where depth matters more than an exact match to your building. A firm that has delivered hundreds of projects across nearly every sector has met the problems before and knows how to price and manage them, whatever the type. The breadth is the qualification. A contractor with that range taking on a building type for the first time is not a risk to avoid. They have more to prove than anyone, and the experience behind them to deliver it.
Promont has delivered more than 400 projects over 25 years, millions of square feet across nearly every sector. That is the kind of record that tells an owner the figure at the start is one the firm can stand behind.
How Promont approaches it
Promont works as the general contractor on an integrated basis. We are involved through design and preconstruction, so the price we commit to is built on work we helped shape, not a number handed to us at the end and quietly padded against the unknowns. The figure at the start is meant to be the figure at the finish. That is the entire point of hiring a general contractor you can trust.
