My team and I have built and maintained a reputation as a leading hardscaping contractor for our area of northeastern Massachusetts by focusing on our own work, not worrying about the competition. But at the same time, customers often tell us about what they have heard or experienced elsewhere. In that way we’re able to keep an eye on the market without having to actually monitor other landscaping firms.

Want to know the one thing we hear again and again? It’s that some companies have trouble keeping on top of schedules… or even quoting good timelines to begin with.

As it turns out, there are completely logical reasons for this. It isn’t that hardscaping contractors (usually) don’t want to tell the truth. Instead, it’s that they don’t have the right experience or resources to know how long a job will actually take.

Let’s go into a bit more detail so you can understand what’s happening, and more importantly figure out what you can do to keep your hardscaping projectglou on track. Below are the most common reasons you get bad time estimates.

Your Hardscaping Job is Bigger Than the Contractor is Used to

This is a big one. There are plenty of local landscaping companies who will be happy to bid on a larger hardscaping project if they have the opportunity. After all, getting it could open doors to more money, some new industry experience, and maybe even a handful of referrals.

The problem, of course, is that you don’t want someone learning on the job while they are digging up your property. They are almost guaranteed to overlook some details, especially during the planning stage. They don’t know what they don’t know, so they can’t see what they might be overlooking.

Put these factors together and it’s easy for costs and timelines to exceed expectations pretty quickly.

The Hardscaping Contractor is Missing Some Important Details

While this issue is related to the last one, the cause can be different. While some contractors just aren’t aware of all that goes into a hardscaping job, others rush through the question and discovery process because they want to get quotes out as quickly as possible.

When you don’t really know what you’re working with, either because you didn’t ask or because you don’t have enough experience with the project or property type, you’re going to make mistakes. And of course, most contractors want to bid as low a number as they possibly can.

 

These kinds of mistakes and omissions make it hard to get a true picture of what will actually go into your hardscaping job. It becomes easy to overlook pool and deck size details, grading issues, a septic plan, or even adjustments for power and lighting. Eventually, though, it comes out that something is missing. Then you have to hear about an unexpected delay.

The Hardscaping Contractor’s Team is Too Small

Running a hardscaping company isn’t easy. There are a lot of costs customers never see, like equipment, insurance, employee benefits, and so on. Because margins can get tight, some businesses try to save by cutting back on staff and hours.

Keeping your crew small and lean sounds great on paper. In the real world of projects and deadlines, however, it can cause problems. If you have just enough team members to fill the work that’s on your schedule then you can run into big problems if one of your employees gets sick or is hired away. That’s especially true if they have an important skill that can cause bottlenecks, or if you rely on subcontractors.

Understaffing your contracting company also means having to turn down work sometimes, or at the very least to let customers know delays could be possible. The smaller businesses running shoestring budgets can’t afford to do that, so they work themselves into positions that are virtually guaranteed to become problems.

The only way around this particular obstacle is to hire great people, pay them enough to stay with your business for a long time, and then build a little bit of slack into your project schedules to deal with the inevitable. That’s the approach we take, but it doesn’t seem to be as common as you would expect.

You’ve Had a Hardscaping Contractor Over-Promise in Their Quote

I’ve saved the worst for last. It’s not great, but the truth is that some hardscaping contractors will promise you just about anything to get you to sign on the dotted line and pay a deposit. They’ll tell you what they think you want to hear, even if they know from the outset that they don’t have any way to deliver on their promises.

In my opinion this sort of approach to contracting just creates more problems than it solves. I can’t imagine it’s any fun having homeowners chase you down weeks or months after their landscaping should have been finished.

To avoid being on the wrong end of this type of situation, my advice would be to read reviews and check references. The hardscaping firms like mine that have been around for many years will be happy to show you they will keep their word. All you have to do is make sure you don’t listen to the pretenders.

What do All of These Hardscaping Problems Have in Common?

Look at this list and you’ll notice that every one of these issues stems from hiring a hardscaping contractor that doesn’t have the right reputation and experience.

I understand it can be tempting to take that rock-bottom quote from the company that promises to finish your project a month faster than anyone else can. Unfortunately, that’s usually what happens right before you find that the schedules and budgets you were given are largely imaginary.

If you’re looking for quotes and timelines you can count on – and a team of hardscaping professionals you can trust in Saugus, Massachusetts – then we hope you’ll contact Stefano’s Landscaping today.

We can’t promise we’ll give you the lowest or fastest quote for your job, but you’ll know you’re getting real answers and work that you’ll be proud to show off to your friends and family.