What to Ask Before Hiring an Interior Contractor for a Tenant Improvement
Tenant improvement work goes wrong in predictable ways, and most of them are visible before the contract is signed. These are the questions worth asking, and what a straight answer sounds like.
Which trades do you self-perform, and which do you sub? This is the question that determines how the job actually runs. A contractor who subs every trade is a scheduler, and the schedule is only as good as the availability of six other companies. A contractor who self-performs framing, drywall, tile, flooring, ceilings and finishes controls their own sequence. Neither model is wrong, but you should know which one you are buying, because it decides who you call when something slips.
Can I see your license and your certificate of insurance? In Minnesota, a residential building contractor license is a matter of public record and can be looked up through the Department of Labor and Industry. A contractor should be able to hand over a license number, a current COI and a W-9 without going quiet for three days. If getting those documents is difficult, that difficulty is a preview.
Have you worked in an occupied building? Occupied work is a different discipline from empty-shell work: containment, phased hours, protected paths of travel, a daily reset. A contractor who only does new construction may be excellent and still be the wrong fit for a floor with tenants on it.
How do you handle the punch list? The end of a job is where reputations are made. Ask who walks it, how quickly items get closed and whether the crew that did the work is the crew that comes back. "We will send someone" is a worse answer than a name and a timeframe.
What is not in this number? Ask directly, because the honest answer is never nothing. Permits, disposal, after-hours premiums, substrate repair discovered after demolition, moving furniture or fixtures. Every one of these becomes a change order if it was not discussed. A contractor who names the exclusions up front is easier to work with than one whose bid is lower because the exclusions are unspoken.
What happens if you open a wall and find something? On interior work you will eventually find something: old plumbing, water damage, a substrate that will not take the finish, framing that was never right. What matters is the process. Does work stop and you get a call with options and a price, or does the crew keep going and hand you an invoice? Agree on the threshold before the job starts.
Who is actually on site? Ask whether the person quoting the job will be there while it runs, and who the point of contact is on a given day. On small commercial jobs the answer should be short. If it is not, ask why.
None of these questions are adversarial and none of them should make a good contractor uncomfortable. They are the same questions we expect from property managers who have done this before, and the ones we would rather answer in a walkthrough than in week three.
DAVIE Services is a licensed Minnesota building contractor, #BC810278, insured and bonded, self-performing seventeen interior trades across the South Metro. Ask us all of the above.
