The process of working with a new subcontractor

RCS Influencer Patrick Cochran explains the layered process that helps his company catch mistakes early and keep quality consistent across the board. 

When we start working with a new subcontractor, we like to take a pretty hands-on approach. It usually starts with a face-to-face meeting — kind of like an interview. We ask a bunch of questions to get a feel for how they run their business, how they work with GCs and if their standards line up with ours — especially when it comes to safety, quality and how they treat the properties they’re on. 

We’ll meet with both the owner and any crew leads that are going to be involved in our projects. That part’s important to us. We want to make sure everyone’s on the same page from day one and knows why it’s so important to follow manufacturer specs. We also handle all the onboarding paperwork at this point — just making sure they understand exactly what’s expected before we send them out on a job. 

Once they’re good to go, we assign their first project. Our QA Rep meets them on-site, goes over the contract and makes sure the homeowner or property manager gets introduced to the crew lead. They also review all the key project details so there’s no confusion. 

For those first few jobs, our QA Rep is around a lot. They’ll check in throughout the day — usually in the morning for setup and tear-off, mid-morning for woodwork, later in the day after flashing and underlayment and then again at the end of the day. We want to be sure everything’s done right from the first project. 

As subcontractors start doing more work with us, we ask them to submit more photo documentation, as the QA rep is onsite less. Our QA Rep still does random on-site checks and our Senior PM reviews all the photos in real time from the office. If anything’s off, we catch it and have the crews fix it right away. 

At the end of every project, we do two walk-throughs—first with the crew lead and our QA Rep, then a second one with the customer. That final check is our way of making sure everything meets our standards before we call the job complete. 

It’s a system that’s worked really well for us. Between in-person check-ins and photo reviews, we’ve built a layered process that helps us catch mistakes early and keep quality consistent across the board.