Documentation
Website Open App
Docs / Builder's Library / Qualifying Subcontractors
Builder's Library

Qualifying Subcontractors

Your sub bench is your actual product. Everything a homeowner sees, touches, and lives with in a house you built was installed by someone on your list. The framing, the tile, the cabinets, the paint, the trim — all of it. The GC who treats sub selection as a purchasing decision ("who's cheapest and available?") eventually builds a business on a foundation of other people's careless work. The GC who builds a vetted bench of reliable tradespeople builds a business on a foundation of consistent quality. The vetting process takes time upfront. It saves a lot more on the back end.

Why Your Sub Bench Is Your Business

Your reputation as a GC is built almost entirely on work you didn't personally do. A homeowner doesn't distinguish between "your" work and a sub's work — it's all your work. The bad electrical rough that failed inspection is your bad electrical rough. The tile that cracked in year two because the sub skipped the waterproofing membrane is your tile. The paint that peeled in the first winter because your painter didn't prime bare wood is your paint problem. The GC is the face of the project, the party on the contract, and the one the homeowner calls — and if necessary, sues — when something goes wrong.

This isn't an argument for doing everything yourself. Specialty subs exist because electrical, plumbing, HVAC, tile, and finish carpentry are skilled trades that take years to master. The argument is for being deliberate about who you trust with your homeowner's project and your business's reputation. A bad sub costs you far more than whatever you saved on their bid — in rework, in callbacks, in homeowner relationship damage, and in the time you spend managing problems instead of building projects. The investment in proper vetting is one of the highest-ROI activities in residential construction.

Finding Subs Worth Vetting

The best sub referrals come from other builders. This sounds counterintuitive — why would a competitor share their good subs? — but it happens more than you'd think in healthy local markets. Builders who run good businesses tend to know other builders who run good businesses. If you have collegial relationships with other GCs, ask who they use for tile, framing, plumbing. A recommendation from a builder you respect is worth more than any ad or directory listing. The sub already knows how to work in a professional construction environment.

Supply houses are an underused source. Your lumber yard, tile distributor, plumbing supply, and flooring showroom all see the contractors who buy from them every week. They know who pays their bills on time, who is organized enough to have a material list ready, and who is professional in how they conduct their business. Ask the counter guy at your tile distributor who the reliable tile contractors are. They'll tell you, and they'll also tell you who to avoid. They have no incentive to steer you wrong — they want both of you as customers.

Build your referral network proactively, not reactively. The worst time to look for a new framing crew is the week before you need to break ground. By then, every vetted crew has a backlog, and you're left choosing from whoever happens to be available — which is often available for a reason. Maintain an ongoing habit of collecting names: when you're on a job and a sub from another GC is doing good work, introduce yourself. When you're at a supply house and overhear a conversation about a well-run tile company, ask for a card. The bench you build over three years of deliberate networking is an asset. The sub list assembled from desperation is a liability.

The Pre-Qualification Interview

Before a sub works for you for the first time, have a real conversation — not a text exchange. A 20-minute phone call or in-person meeting will tell you more about a sub than any document they hand you. You're not just verifying credentials; you're assessing how they communicate, whether they answer questions directly, and whether they have a professional understanding of how a construction project runs.

The questions that actually matter:

Call the references. This step gets skipped constantly, and it is one of the highest-value steps in the entire vetting process. When you call, ask specific questions: Did they show up when they said they would? Was the work done correctly the first time, or did it require rework? When punch list items were identified, did they respond promptly and resolve them without argument? Would you use them again, and are you currently using them again? The last question is often the most telling — a reference who says "great work, but we went a different direction" is saying something.

Documents to Collect Before First Use

Having the right conversation is step one. Collecting the right documents before a sub steps foot on your job is step two. A sub who checks out verbally but won't produce basic documentation is telling you something about how they run their business.

Four documents are non-negotiable before first use:

Document When Required How to Verify
Contractor's license Before first job, renewed annually State licensing board online lookup — verify classification and expiration
Certificate of Insurance (COI) Before each job, track expiration Verify directly with their insurance agent if in doubt; check dates and limits
W-9 Before first payment Collect and file — required for 1099 at year-end for payments over $600
Executed sub contract Before work begins on any job Your contract template, signed by an authorized officer of their entity

On the sub contract: use your own template, not theirs. A sub who insists you use only their contract is negotiating to limit their own obligations under terms they wrote to favor themselves. Your sub contract should at minimum address: scope of work, payment schedule tied to milestones, schedule obligations and consequences for delays, warranty terms, lien waiver requirements at each payment, insurance requirements, and the right to withhold payment pending completion of deficient work. If you don't have a sub contract template, have a construction attorney draft one. It will cost a few hundred dollars and save you multiples of that on the first dispute it resolves.

Tip: Verify contractor licenses through your state's licensing board website, not from a copy the sub provides. Licenses can be expired, suspended, or in the wrong classification — and a sub may hand you a clean copy while the state record tells a different story.

Red Flags That Should Stop You

None of the following items automatically disqualify a sub. Some have legitimate explanations. But each one should trigger a harder look, additional questions, or in several cases, a pass — at least until the issue is resolved to your satisfaction.

The common thread through most of these flags is a sub who operates informally, resists accountability, or has something to hide. Professional subs who run solid businesses are accustomed to being vetted. They have their documents ready. They give references without hesitation. They sign industry-standard contracts. The vetting process itself is a filter: subs who find it burdensome are often the ones who most need to be filtered out.

The First Job: A Controlled Test

Even a sub who passes every pre-qualification check is an unknown on your first job together. Chemistry, communication style, site cleanliness, schedule adherence — none of these show up on a COI or a license lookup. The only way to evaluate them is on an actual project. The smart approach: start small. Use a new sub on a lower-complexity scope before handing them your flagship phase. A new tile sub gets the laundry room and a half-bath before they get the master bath and the kitchen backsplash. A new framing sub gets the detached garage before they frame a 4,000-square-foot two-story.

During the first job, you're watching for specific behaviors. Do they show up when they said they would, or do you have to chase them? When a problem comes up — a material delivery delay, a field condition that affects their scope — do they call you proactively, or do you discover the problem yourself? Do they leave the site organized at the end of each day, or do they leave it as a hazard for other trades? Is their work passing inspections the first time? Is their billing accurate and submitted on time, or is it vague and irregular? A sub who gets all of these right on a small scope earns the bigger work. A sub who struggles on the test earns a conversation before any future work is considered.

Building and Maintaining Your Sub List

A sub list is only as good as it is current. The framing crew who were excellent three years ago may have turned over their key people and gone downhill. The tile company who was difficult last year may have gotten a new project manager and cleaned up their operations. A static list doesn't reflect these changes. After every job, update your notes: how did this sub perform? Did they hit schedule, produce quality work, respond professionally to punch items? A simple 1–5 rating attached to a record is enough — you're not writing a performance review, you're capturing a signal while it's fresh.

The goal is a bench with depth: two or three vetted options per trade, so you're never dependent on one sub who's unavailable, has a bad quarter, or prices themselves out. Single-source dependency on any trade is a schedule and quality risk. When your only framer is booked, you have no leverage and no options. When you have three vetted framing crews, you have negotiating power, schedule flexibility, and a backstop if someone fails to perform. Building that bench takes time — probably two to three years of deliberate outreach and relationship-building. It's one of the most important long-term investments you can make in your business.

Note: Keep track of sub COI expiration dates separately from the initial vetting process. A sub who was fully insured when you first collected their documents may have let coverage lapse by the time you use them on a second job. See the Vendor Insurance article for a full system for tracking expirations.

In Baulit

Baulit's Contact Directory is where your sub and vendor bench lives in the app. Each contact record holds trade type, contact details, notes, and — critically — insurance expiration dates. You can log a sub's COI expiration when you collect it, and Baulit surfaces contacts with approaching or lapsed coverage in the reporting layer so you know to chase renewals before they become gaps in your protection.

The Overdue & Insurance Report gives you a cross-project view of insurance status across all your subs and vendors. Instead of maintaining a separate spreadsheet to track who's current and who needs a new COI, the report flags the ones that need attention. If you're running multiple projects with overlapping sub rosters, this becomes a meaningful time-saver and a genuine risk management tool — the kind of thing that catches a lapsed policy before you have a worker on site without coverage.

As you build your notes on subs over time — who performed well, who has capacity, who to avoid — the Contact Directory's notes field gives you a running record tied to each sub's profile rather than a separate notebook or spreadsheet that can get lost. Your vetting history, performance notes, and insurance status live together in one place, accessible from any project they're associated with.

PreviousPunch List Management