10 Questions to Ask Before Hiring a St. Pete General Contractor

1. Can I see your open-book weekly cost reports from a project you completed last year?
This filter separates Time & Materials (T&M) contractors who actually operate open-book from fixed-price GCs who can't show you their internal numbers. A real T&M shop hands over a sample redacted report in the first meeting. Look for line items broken down by trade, actuals vs. estimate, and running budget-to-date. Revolution runs T&M with weekly reports as the default.

2. How many carpenters on my project will be W-2 employees vs. subcontractors, and who's carrying their workers' comp?
'Paper contractors' sell the job and sub every trade to the lowest bidder. When their subs no-show for a better-paying job, your project sits. Ask for actual headcount on the contractor's payroll and confirm they carry Florida workers' comp on those employees. Revolution has 20+ W-2 carpenters on payroll and carries workers' comp on all of them; specialty trades (electrical, plumbing, HVAC) are subbed to long-term partners.

3. Walk me through the FEMA 50% rule calculation you'd run on my lot before design starts.
If your lot is in an AE or VE flood zone, this separates GCs who have done the work from GCs who'll cost you a full compliance rebuild they didn't see coming. A qualified answer names the appraised structure value, the improvement threshold, cumulative rule variants by municipality (Pinellas at 50%, St. Pete at 49%), and how they'd sequence design to stay under. Jeremy Wharton has run this on dozens of Pinellas flood-zone projects since 2018.

4. Which specific superintendent will run my project, and how many other jobs will they be running at the same time?
'We'll assign someone' is not an answer. Get a name. Get their current project count. A superintendent running six jobs cannot give any of them the attention a $500K-$2M project deserves. Revolution assigns one dedicated on-site superintendent per project, backed by a general superintendent for cross-project oversight.

5. What percentage of my budget will be locked as fixed-price line items before demo starts?
A maturity test. A GC who has run pre-construction rigorously will tell you 75% of line items are locked as fixed-price commitments from vendors and subs before demo, bringing total budget certainty to roughly 90-95%. A GC who says 'we'll figure it out as we go' is either inexperienced or planning to profit from your surprises.

6. Show me the last three projects you finished that came in over budget. What went wrong and what did the client pay for?
Every honest GC has some. The dodge is 'we always come in on budget.' The real answer names a specific project, what triggered the overage (hidden conditions, client scope change, permit delay), what the client paid for, and what the GC absorbed. This tells you how they behave when things go wrong — the only time it matters.

7. Who pulls the permits, and what's your average number of building-department comments per submittal in St. Pete?
Your GC pulls permits under their license. That's non-negotiable. Average comments per submittal in St. Pete reveals whether they know how to prepare a permit package the building department will actually accept. Jeremy calls the St. Pete building department 'one of the more difficult in the region.' A GC who submits clean packages moves faster and blames the city less.

8. How do you handle the handoff from your sales/estimating team to the field crew — is there a documented meeting or does it just happen?
The most expensive misunderstandings on a project happen in the gap between what was sold and what shows up in the field. A serious GC has a documented pre-construction handoff meeting where the client, project manager, general superintendent, and on-site superintendent all sit down together before mobilization. If the answer is 'our foreman just picks up the file,' expect drift.

9. What does your callback process look like in year two, after the workmanship warranty is technically expired?
The workmanship warranty is usually one year. The question is what happens in year two when the caulk line at the tub cracks or a cabinet door starts to sag. A relationship-based GC responds. A transactional one stops answering the phone. Revolution's stated policy: if it's clearly something we caused, we work with you to make it right at minimum expense.

10. If we end up in a scope dispute or a change I don't agree with, what's your process for resolving it before invoices go out?
Every project has at least one disagreement about whether something is in-scope or out-of-scope. The question is whether the GC has a process for resolving it or whether they invoice first and argue later. Look for: documented in writing before work proceeds, client written approval required, reflected in the next weekly budget update — not a text-thread argument at final payment.