Contractors and Subcontractors: What's the Difference?
Contractors and subcontractors play a key role in the construction process. With a title so similar one might wonder how the two differ. While contractors and subcontractors work closely together and coordinate with each other for projects, the difference between the two is that while contractors are hired directly by customers, subcontractors are hired by contractors to carry out a specialized task.
For example, when you're hiring a landscaping company or construction company, you're often hiring a contractor that manages and oversees the entire project. However, they might not specialize in every component of the building process so they hire subcontractors who deliver different specialties whether that's road paving, electric work, flooring, and more. This benefits everyone involved by making sure that the work done is of higher quality.
Contractors and subcontractors can be one person or a company. Just like how any company might hire a web designer to carry out a website task or a marketing agency to create graphics, contractors will hire subcontractors to carry out specialized tasks.
Contractor's Role and Responsibilities
Once a contractor is hired for a job, they own that job and are responsible for the quality and execution of the project. In this role, the contractor plans and coordinates all activity that is needed for the project, including all of the business aspects, and manages and supervises the job to make sure the time and budget requirements are met. Some key duties of a contractor include:
- Renting or purchasing equipment for the project
- Preparing for project changes by implementing risk mitigation strategies
- Hiring subcontractors to complete specialized labor
- Ensuring legal and regulatory standards are met
- Quality control assurance
- Ensuring the constant supply of materials while being cost-effective and following safety measures
- Interfacing and updating the stakeholders with updates
The primary contractor holds a lot of responsibility. Because of this, it's important to do research and hire a contractor to ensure the job is managed correctly.
Subcontractor's Role and Responsibilities
The role of a subcontractor is simply to execute the job they are hired by the contractor for. It is oftentimes a specialized job such as electrical or HVAC and it is the subcontractor's responsibility to execute the work as instructed. In order to achieve this, it's important to speak with the construction management group and primary contractor about the timeline, goal and budget of the project to deliver the highest quality service.
Conclusion
Although the two roles are sometimes confused with each other, they are not the same. They each have specific roles that they have to carry out on a project. Contractors rely on subcontractors to execute the specialized work they are hired for while subcontractors rely on contractors to find them these jobs. As such, contractors and subcontractors should focus on building strong business relationships as they rely on each other to get the job done and having trust in each other goes a long way.
