Get Apples-To-Apples with Roof Replacement

I want to give you a real quick story about somebody that I sat down with the other day, and I'm hoping I'm going to be doing business with soon. I talked to them about their roof portfolio and some of the challenges and struggles they have with managing that roof portfolio.

They brought up a roof that they're looking at replacing, and they told me they're just about ready to sign a contract on it. I was talking to them about their bid procurement process.

I said, "Are you sure you got proper bids? Everything was for the same scope of work." And they said, "Yeah, we got quite a few different bids. And yeah, they're all for the same system. There was a pretty good spread between the second lowest and the lowest. So we're about ready to assign the lowest guy's proposal."

I said, "Can I please take a look at those scopes of work? I want to take a look and see if there are any differences." So he gave me both of the scopes of work. I was able to go through those things and identify them.

I said to him, "Look… before you sign that contract, let me ask you a question. In the springtime, do you get a lot of water holding on your roof? It looks like a pond up there." He said, "Yeah, some people refer to it as a lake, but we get a lot of water on our roof." I said, "Okay. And I'm sure that causes problems in the wintertime with icing and all kinds of issues with not allowing water to drain properly in the wintertime and snow buildup." And he said, "Absolutely."
I said, "Okay. So let me ask another question. Warranty, how important is a warranty to you?" He said, "Critical." And I said, "How about oversight? Making sure a proper install took place?" He said, "Well, yeah, absolutely."

So I let them know that number one, the contract he was about to sign for the low bid, was for flat stock installation. It was going to do nothing to help get the water off of the roof. All that ponding and the lake that they have up there will remain the same as it has been even after a new roof is put on.

Secondly, one was for tapered installation, and it's going to taper to the drainage points, and it's going to get all that water off there.

Thirdly, one was for a material-only warranty. It was a 20-year material-only warranty; as I told him, a material-only warranty only covers if there's a defect in the material. So if something happens where that material prematurely fails because it was on a faulty run, that's the only time you're going to get any coverage with that warranty.

The other warranty is an NDL, manufacturer NDL warranty, that is labor, material for the full life of the 20 years. With an NDL warranty, not only does it provide the ultimate value that a warranty can provide for a roof, but it also provides oversight.

And I informed them that manufacturers have to come out and review the install and make sure that it met best practices, make sure that manufacturer requirements were met before they'll even issue the warranty, and provide you with that all oversight you said is important to you. So with all that being said, they quickly realized that the cheapest price was not the best value, and they went with the other one.

It is so important that you make sure that you create an apples-to-apples environment, not comparing apples and oranges and trying to make a decision, especially something that costs as much as a roof replacement is not something you want to be doing.

We can certainly help you create the apples-to-apples environment, and we have a great platform to do so. If that's something that you're interested in or something that you might need for coming up, please reach out to us.

Always remember apples to apples, and cheapest isn't always the best value.