How to Find General Contractors to Work With (Subs and Suppliers)

For subcontractors and building suppliers, the best general contractor to approach is one with work coming up. A GC with three projects out to bid next month needs subs and suppliers now. One between jobs will take your details and file them.

Public records and bid platforms show which GCs are active and when they're pricing their next jobs. The rest is getting on their bid lists and reaching the people who build the bids.

Where to find active general contractors

Permits tell you who's building now. Plan holder lists and bid boards tell you who's about to. Those two together give you the GCs worth calling this month.

Who to contact at a GC

The owner of a mid-size general contractor isn't choosing the drywall sub. These are the people who do:

The estimator is usually the way in. Estimators need several bids per trade on every project, and a responsive new sub makes their job easier.

Get your prequalification packet ready

Many general contractors prequalify subcontractors before they'll accept a bid, especially on commercial and public work. Have this ready to send the same day:

• Insurance certificates, with the coverage limits GCs in your market typically require.

• Safety record. In the US, that usually means your EMR (experience modification rate) and your safety programme.

• Licences for your trade and region.

• Bonding capacity, if you're going after public or larger projects.

• References and recent projects, with sizes and contacts.

• Crew size and capacity, so they know what you can take on.

A sub who answers "send your prequal" within the hour is already ahead of most of the list.

What a general contractor usually asks for before accepting a sub's bid.

What to say

Keep it short and make it easy to add you to a bid list:

Hi [Name], we're a [trade] contractor based in [area], working on [project types] in the [size range] range. We have capacity from [month] and our prequalification packet is ready to send. I saw [GC] is bidding [project, if you know one]. Could we be added to your bidders list for [trade] on that one and future projects?

Mentioning a specific project shows you've done your homework. If you don't know one, ask what's coming up in your trade.

Timing

Estimators work to bid deadlines. Reach them a week or two before bid day, while they're still collecting numbers. After the award, the project manager may still need a sub if one has dropped out, but the main window is before the price is set.

Track bid dates in a calendar and follow up a few days before each one. GCs remember the sub who sent a clean number on time.

Doing it with ManyPI

Disclosure: ManyPI is our product.

You can describe the GCs you want in one sentence, for example "commercial general contractors in the Dallas area working on projects over $1M, with the chief estimator's email", and the agent researches them on the live web, using contractor websites, news and public project pages where available. Map Search pulls construction companies inside an area you draw on a map. Every email is checked before sending, sequences go out from your own inbox and stop on reply, and CRM tasks remind you before each bid date.

A general contractor search typed into the ManyPI agent.

The local business leads page shows the workflow. Permit portals differ a lot between cities, so for your own area it's worth learning how the local one searches. It's often the single best free source of active contractors.

Don't chase every GC in the region. Pick the ones building the kind and size of project you do best, and get on their lists properly. Ten GCs who invite you to bid regularly beat a hundred who don't know your name.