It Pays to have Friends

I've been thinking about this post for a while and now seems as good a time as any to write it. A little over 2 years ago I moved into a new office. It had been in the design process in my head and on scraps of paper for about 2-3 years. I found an excellent local architect who took my paltry ideas as well as my detailed geeky protocol for technology and created my dream environment. He was well versed in dental design and did an amazing job. He knew my friends at Goetze Dental and worked closely with them to make sure that everything dental would fit exactly as planned... and it did.

The second part of it was finding the right contractor to build the dream. We interviewed several builders that the architect recommended. Some were less expensive on their bids than others, but we were more interested in success and low stress than we were on the lowest bid.

We ended up settling on a company that was not the lowest bidder, but instead was the most organized and projected an over all culture of hard work and honesty.

Our project was completed one month early, on budget, and literally everything went exactly according to plan.

The reason for this post? I had a conversation recently with a local dentist who was lamenting to me that he was building a new office and that many things were going wrong with the project. It was way past the completion date and was still in need of much work. It was also a budgetary nightmare and potentially a financial problem. I asked him if he had interviewed the contractor I had used and he told me he had, but that their bid was higher than the contractor he was using.

Sometimes we can be penny wise and pound foolish. When approaching a project of this magnitude I highly encourage you to consider lots of variables. Saving money can frequently result in actually losing money when poor decisions are made.

Thanks also to Goetze Dental, architect Guy Gronberg, and House & Renner Construction. I couldn't have done it without you!


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