A construction work consists of many phases, from project planning to actual survey, technical design, detailed drawings, construction completion to hand over, … Construction units will undertake one, or several, or the whole project mission. For each type of tasks, there will be each corresponding type of general construction contractor.
Popular types of general construction contractors
There are many ways to classify general construction contractors, but the most popular are the following 3 types:
– Design – Build General Contractor
– Engineering Procurement and Construction Contractor (EPC Contractor)
– General contractor of construction investment project, engineering, supplying technology equipment and constructing
Design – Build General Contractor
The Design – Build general contractor will participate and take responsibility from the actual survey, technical drawings, detailed drawings of the project, to the construction and completion stage. The general contractor must ensure reasonable drawings, optimal area and work function, while ensuring the quality and safety of construction, ensuring handover on time to investors.
Design and construction are two independent phases of a project. If the investor does not have much management experience, does not have enough manpower and management costs for each individual task, wants to find a contractor of primary responsibility to limit risks, the Design – Build general contractor will be the most suitable choice.
EPC General Contractor
EPC General Contractor is the unit responsible for the design, supply of technology equipment and construction of the entire project. Not only focusing on technical expertise like Design – Build general contractor, EPC General Contractor also has to pay attention to the process of purchasing machinery and equipment, installation for the project, ensuring technology transfer to the investor, ensuring warranty and maintenance service for the machines that they provide.
However, the investor must be very careful when using the EPC general contractor. The value of the EPC contract is often very large, many different work items are difficult to control by the investor, while the EPC general contractor is assigned almost with full authority, so the risk is quite large. In addition, each factory uses its own machinery and technical lines, requiring a professional view of experts, to ensure safety as well as quality in production.
General contractor of construction investment project, engineering, supplying technology equipment and constructing
This is the general contractor with the highest responsibility among the above general contractors: from making investment projects to designing, constructing, supplying technological equipment for the works. Not only requires technical expertise, the ability to supply technology systems, the general contractor must also have the capacity to advise and plan for effective investment projects.
Although applying this type of general contractor, the investor will save much more time and manpower, but this is not the “universal key”. Similar to the EPC general contractor, if there is no management experience, not only does it not bring the expected efficiency, but the investor also incurs unreasonably high costs, causing budget waste.
Each type of general construction contractor has its own advantages and disadvantages. Investors should carefully choose type of general contractor in order to have the most suitable application direction for their construction investment projects.
