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What does a remodel cost? Gary Catchpole talks contractor transparency pricing.
Tell us a little bit about yourself:
“I’m a general contractor serving residential and commercial industries. I provide a high end service, from making design architect drawings to completion of C of O (Certificate of Occupancy).”
Do you have an area you specialize in?
“I specialize more in residential. We act more as project managers–encompassing all the facets that go with any apartment, above and beyond that of a general contractor. We do custom cabinetry, custom light fixtures…we have the ability to do anything custom. And if it’s a house, there’s the obvious landscape side of things as well.”
Where do you work?
“We have no limitations, but we focus on Connecticut, New York City, Westchester, Long Island, some in New Jersey, and we’ve done a lot of work in the Caribbean.”
What sets you apart from the competition?
“We provide a high level of service. We are the right hand man to the most influential people. We work for CEOs that need one person to literally absorb everything and then go off and manage it and create solutions.”
“We also try to be transparent. We’re a cost plus company. The client sees the actual cost of each product or service. We find that the general contractors we compete with tend to go in very low, don’t have a complete package. Then sometimes we get a call halfway through. They say they’re being screwed, because of a change of order. What was X is now X times 5…because the general contractor made a mistake in the beginning.”.
Any projects that you have that you’re particularly proud of?
“I think we’re proud of every project. But the one we just finished on 62nd street for NYC was taking 3 apartments and knocking them into one. It’s a computerized apartment so everythings integrated into a G-system. I don’t think you can get any higher detail or functionability.”
What’s going on in your business these days?
“There’s a lot of educating younger generation as they educate me, especially with computer systems and functionality from an iphone to operate your whole home office, I think that’s the biggest change: computers, IT audio engineers are part of every project, whereas 30 years ago we didn’t know anything about them.”
Anything else you want to say?
“People ask if we do small or large projects. There’s no project too large or too small. The thing is, we bring added value. So we’re never going to be the cheapest method but we will be the most efficient and cost-effective method of getting a commercial residential project built.”