Just Tell Us What Your Goal Is — And We'll Help You Get There.

May 19, 2026

Most commercial tenants think the construction process starts when they send drawings out to bid. In our experience, by that point some of the most important decisions have already been made — or missed.

The bid process feels like due diligence. Multiple numbers, multiple contractors, compare and choose. But a number without context isn't information — it's a starting point for questions you should have asked before the drawings were finished.

What Happens When the Numbers Come In Higher Than Expected?

Here's a scenario that plays out more often than it should. A tenant negotiates a lease, agrees to a TI allowance, gets comfortable with a budget range someone gave them early on — and then the bids come back significantly higher than anticipated. Now they're locked into a lease, committed to a space, and facing a budget gap with no good options.  The only real option at this point is a redesign, with the resultant loss of time (probably 4-5 weeks, minimum), and a very high likelihood that your design team is GOING TO CHARGE YOU to redo the drawings.

All of that is avoidable. A contractor who is involved early — before the lease is signed, before the drawings are finalized — can give you a budget that's within ten percent of where you'll actually land. That number becomes a real planning tool, not a surprise at the finish line.

If You're Relying on Your Broker for Budget Guidance, Understand the Risk

Brokers are valuable partners in the real estate process. But estimating construction costs isn't what they do every day — and there are no ramifications if their numbers are off. If a broker's budget guidance turns out to be twenty percent low, you're the one absorbing that gap. They've moved on to the next deal.

A GC who gives you a budget number is accountable to it. That accountability changes the quality of the number.

What Did You Do to Prequalify?

Before you evaluate a bid, evaluate the bidder. Do you know who's actually running the project day to day? What's their on-time completion rate? How many punch list items do their projects typically carry at closeout? How many change orders do they average — and what caused them?

These questions tell you more about a contractor than any number on a page. A low bid from a contractor with a history of scope disputes and late deliveries isn't a deal. It's a risk you're absorbing without knowing it.

We Don't Bid. We Partner.

At M&C Construction we don't approach projects as a bidding exercise. We approach them as a partnership — and that distinction matters more than most people realize.

We agonize over our own numbers. The difference between coming in at ten percent and ten and a half percent overhead matters to us — even when the client would never know. That's not because we're required to. It's because our reputation is built on accuracy and trust, not on what we can get away with.

We also have little control over what a project actually costs — materials, labor, market conditions — none of that is ours to dictate. What we can control is how honestly and thoroughly we work through the numbers with you upfront.