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A good website alone is no longer sufficient, especially at a time when digitalisation is increasing exponentially. Make sure you stand out from the crowd with qualities that general contractors are looking for in subcontractors.
Professionalism
Promote yourself properly online. A great website, clear social media channels and a decent e-mail address are the first steps you took in professionalising your company. The logical next step is a company profile on 12Build. A complete company profile with 12Build will ensure that general contractors can find you more easily on your specialisation and can filter on such things as your quality labels, certificates, building sectors and the distance to work. The profile enables the matchmaking between the general contractor and subcontractor to proceed quickly, smoothly and transparently as much as possible.
Company profiles of subcontractors on 12Build are extremely extensive. Main contractors can see everything they need to know before submitting an invitation to tender to you. This includes your name and address details, your areas of work and business activities, your specialisations, your logo and your reference projects.
Reliability
Calculators want to do their job to the best of their ability and to make the right choice for a subcontractor immediately. It is up to you to show them that you are the subcontractor they need. And to do this, it is important to show what you have already done. Develop a portfolio of reference projects to demonstrate what you are capable of. Unique projects on which you have worked. Creative solutions you found to problems you encountered. And work which demonstrates you can handle a whole range of jobs. Make sure to show your certificates and quality labels as well. This will help convince a general contractor that you are the one for the job. Only 25% of subcontractors who have a company profile with 12Build fill in reference projects. This means you will have a significant head start if you provide these.
Another way to show that you can be trusted is to add quality labels and certificates in your company profile. If your company is ISO certified, you should point this out. Do you have sustainability labels? Make sure you show these to the general contractor in your 12Build company profile.
Good communication
Communication and construction are inextricably linked. Complex construction projects require collaboration, close contact and clear agreements. Uncertainty leads to delays, conflicts and problems in later phases of the project. So to avoid these occurring at the construction site, it is essential to establish and implement a good communication protocol. Everyone needs to know what, how and to whom they are reporting. It is especially important to document when jobs have been successfully completed. Moving on to the next job before the work you carried out has been approved can result in major problems later on in the project. Changes to the scope of the project or to the planning must be documented and reported in accordance with criteria drawn up in advance.
With 12Build, all communication between you and the general contractor is stored in the cloud, so that all agreements remain safe and available. The work documents and communication of an awarded project will remain in the 12Build cloud for 15 years. If a project has not been awarded, the information will be stored for three years.
Potential for a long-term, high-quality collaboration
Good collaboration for one project can lead to collaboration for subsequent projects. Main contractors have the option in their 12Build environment to specify their preferred subcontractors. If general contractors filter on specialisation for a subsequent project, their preferred subcontractors will be presented first in our database.
And finally: always ask general contractors for an evaluation after completing a project. They can simply do this in 12Build. Other general contractors will see the evaluation when they search for your company. A good review immediately builds trust with other potential clients. And a reliable work partner is precisely what general contractors are looking for.
