Unistrut: Have you ever been puzzled by contractor bids with significant price discrepancies?

Unistrut: Have you ever been puzzled by contractor bids with significant price discrepancies?

Sometimes a low bid can mean your contractor is cutting corners to hit a price point or business is slow. A higher bid may signal a contractor that is buried in jobs or testing the waters to see how his pricing compares with the competition. In other cases, a higher bid may mean better design, workmanship, and materials. It is always important to make like for like comparisons and to fight the temptation to dismiss quotes exclusively based on price. If your request for bid returns two quotes that differ only on price and the materials and workmanship from both firms is similar, by all means, consider the low bid

Unistrut: Have you ever been puzzled by contractor bids with significant price discrepancies?

We recently received a call from a customer to re-visit a project our team quoted 10+ years ago at their Clinic. We were not the “low bidder” and the contract to install a ceiling mounted support structure for operating room lights was awarded to another contractor. This year’s renovation includes plans to change out the lights in the same location. During selective demolition, one of the welds broke. According to an outside structural engineer, poor design and installation methods, which included a hodge-podge mix of welded, fabricated steel and channel of unknown origin, caused the system to fail and future remodeling incorporating this structure would have posed significant challenges.

The picture below is from a different contractor’s installation, but it illustrates the same basic points. The channel in the picture looks like modular strut, but it is not genuine Unistrut material. Close examination also reveals mismatched channel in different profile configurations (and fittings) from multiple manufacturers. Unfortunately, the low bidder used fittings and channel from multiple sources for this installation, so it was not possible to reuse the existing structure. Our Unistrut team remedied this situation by designing a proper solution to allow for a quick installation and modularity.

At DP Building Systems, we do a large number of installations for hospitals, clinics, and medical centers that benefit from modular designs that can be modified, both mid-stream and years later. If you think about it, medical settings are in a constant state of flux: new equipment is installed to provide better patient care; space is re-configured to maximize efficiencies and ROI; new wings are added to accommodate more patients. Larger hospitals are often in what we deem a state of permanent construction. These jobs lend themselves to the modular nature of reusable Unistrut channel, which allows for an infinite level of adjustability while maintaining precise tolerances.