Construction Estimating Students looking for help!

[jarchinc]

I am a Construction Estimating student at the University of Houston. We are currently doing a project were we must estimate a Wal-mart Super Center in Puyallup, Washington. Part of this project calls for us to find information about Bonds. We would like to know what types of Bonds we definitely need to pull this project off, as well as a safe ballpark figure of their cost. We would greatly appreciate if you can help us with this information, and would like to thank you ahead of time for you help.

[Riskwriter]

Well- it depends. WallMart, being a privately held (ie. - not government owned) does not HAVE to require bonds at all if they do not choose to.

If they do require performance and payment bond of the contractors providing work for them- you can estimate bond premiums to vary from less than 1% on average for larger contracts - and as high as 2.5% for smaller sub-contracts.

hope that helps.

[BondLaw]

Nice to hear from someone who has decided to get into the riskiest job in the construction business.

I might be able to add a little something to Riskwriters post. Assuming Wal-Mart is requiring a bond—and it customarily does—the contractor would have an established line of surety credit. Hence, the estimator already knows the rate that the surety will charge (e.g. 1% of the contract price). Once the hard costs have been estimated, the bond premium is calculated and added to the estimate.

As to the type of bonds needed, there are the standard performance and payment bonds for private works, for which the American Institute of Architect’s form A-312 would be used. Since this is a “super center,” an encroachment bond might also be required if any of the work is going to take place in the public right-of-way. But the only way to determine this is to study the plans and check local regulations.

[mjet]

The surety company may require a different type of form because the legalese of Sam's Club and Wal-Mart contracts are very one-sided. Go figure!

Just my $.02!