I'd be VERY wary of ANY GC that needs to get an additional competitive quote for anything in this market.
What happened to his other subs?
Are they going unpaid?
The massive contraction in construction means that EVERY player is trying to find a place to sit now that the music has stopped.
If you are at all under-capitalized -- and most contractors are -- then the best tactic is to stay with what you know and who you know. It is far better to either sit at home or enter non-construction activities than it is to ACTIVELY LOSE BIG MONEY chasing bids into a hole.
Low-balling is a sure route to financial doom. We can have an impact on quality and tempo, which is the value a good EC brings to the table. But without enough revenue, paid in a timely manner, you'll collapse no matter how fast you dance.
The larger problem is there are so many GC's who think that they can fight the business cycle by low-balling and then, in turn, shaving all of his subs. BTW, most GC's figure that the subs are making a killing. This is so because too often EC's give way on pricing leading the GC to assume that a ton of fat is larded into every bid.
----
BTW, I see from EC Magazine that some EC's are expecting 2010 to be worse than last year because their own bidding tempo is already way below 2009.
Locally, CraigsList relentlessly details one contractor after another folding up shop. Commercial TI work has collapsed.
