My company has been in business for over a year and has learned the ins-and-outs of this industry by trial, error, and research. Like most of my industry peers we have had more successes than failures and fortunately have not had any major mistakes. We have general liability and errors & omissions insurance and I hope to never need them or file a claim. The reality is that our time will come, but I feel that if we're performing the work correctly, we might be able to avoid the “big” mistake.

I'd like to open this topic as a community learning experience where we can benefit from our shared experience and hopefully learn from the mistakes and/or successes of others. Please feel free to add posts of your experience so that we can learn together.

As a starting point, one lesson we've learned the hard way has dealt with receiving bid approvals for debris removal. Basically, we receive a work order, bid debris removal and then received a Bid Approval. The lesson learned is to accurately bid the debris. For example, the Pacific Northwest has a large amount of blackberry bushes, which grow over and into piles of debris. Our learning experience is that various amounts of debris can be concealed and my bid approval for removing all exterior debris at 20 CY is actually 40 CY. Lesson Learned: throughly document the debris and bid at or slightly above the amount present.

Another lesson learned is latex paint. Landfills and transfer stations will not take it unless it's in a solid form. Kitty litter works best to solidify it, and buying kitty litter at Costco in bulk has proven the cheapest route. I've actually grown to hate paint, as it's a big pain in the butt, and I'm confident that if I run a cost analysis for acutal time spent disposing of it, I'll be in the red.

Any ideas or practices that work for you?

Lessons learned....Be careful about taking work outside of your coverage area. You WILL be asked to take an assignment outside of you coverage area. They will say they really need you to do it or they do not have anyone else to do it. They will promise to "remember" you if you do this favor for them. Well, if you take it, you must do it and do it in a timely manner.
Most companies score their vendors performance. You will not be granted a pass because you accept an order outside of your territory and cannot complete it in time. As a matter of fact, the order will probably be a rush job and have a shorter turn around time than usual and you still have to complete you regular orders.
If the order requires a bid, you will probably have to make another trip. If you run into an unusual situation, you will not have access to the resources that you will have in your normal territory, etc., etc. etc.

My partner went out to bid a debris removal, and came back said he could do it for the allowable. He went out and did the trash out, a couple weeks later we were contacted and was told there was still debris at the property. I went out there and saw that they were right, there happened to be a garage that had more crap in it then there was throughout the rest of the property in total.


Lesson learned; Make sure you or anyone else look around at everything and make sure you do not overlook anything, unless you like working for free.