As a developer, how much control do you have over your GC?
Title says it all. To what degree do you have control over budget and schedule? For costly mistakes that the gc made and could have been avoided, is there anyway of avoiding that?
Depends on how you negotiate your contract. You pay a GC to coordinate your project and take certain risks for a fee. Depending on the cost/schedule overrun they could be on the hook, or the owner could be. Generally, if the GC makes a mistake they pay for it, but if it's a GMP you're going to pay it out of potential project savings, which in essence means you pay for it.
A GC is trying to make a profit like everyone else, they are going figure out a way to make money if possible. If they are not making money, they are going to try cut conners where they can. Generally, it's best to be tough but fair when managing a GC.
in your experience have you found one solid gc that you are able to partner with every time where you both win in a way, or are you constantly working with different one each time?
Yes, I think you can get into a groove where both the GC and owner understand what each other is buying/selling. The tough thing is that project success is completely dependent on the team you get from the GC. You could have the same GC with a different team with a completely different result. It will also depend on if the projects are alike or not. One GC might be good at building garden apartments but suck at infill etc.
Very little.
Your only control (depending on contract type) is going to be reliant on having extremely, extremely specific construction drawings and specs. Like, I cannot begin to emphasize that enough. Unless specific products and materials are called out, and called out everywhere 100% of the time, you have essentially no effective control over what your GC does at the site, despite nominally being in charge.
Hah, what mistake did your GC make? I'm dealing with a $275k error right now, although this one is more on the architect.
Most of the time they aren't big mistakes, but they are several small ones that keep getting repeated. My shop works on several small projects that have a total development cycle of 2-3 years, so in general its been easy to spot where our gc has experience and what errors they keep repeating. Some examples include not properly securing the site at the end of night, not pushing the subs to complete their full scope of work, or just providing a properly updated schedule.
Sounds like you have a lazy ass superintendent. It's really hard to find a good super these days. All of the boomers who were great at it are retiring.
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