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Most developers walk into a GC evaluation with the same set of questions. How long have you been in business? What projects have you done like mine? Can you meet the schedule? Can you hit the budget?
These are reasonable questions. They are also the questions every GC in Texas has a polished answer for.
The questions that actually reveal what you need to know before signing are different - and most clients never ask them. After years of running operations on commercial construction projects across Houston, Dallas-Fort Worth, Austin, San Antonio, and Corpus Christi, Murtaza Khan, our Director of Operations at Anchor Construction, has seen what gets missed in these conversations and what it costs when it does.
This is his list
Before signing a commercial construction contract in Texas, developers should ask their GC five questions most clients skip: how the GC makes money on the project, who specifically manages the job day-to-day, how change orders are handled and approved, how subcontractors are pre-qualified, and what a recent project looked like from pre-construction to closeout. The answers to these five questions reveal more about a GC's reliability than any reference list.
TL;DR
- Question 1 (the one most clients never ask): "Walk me through exactly how you make money on my project"
- Question 2: Who specifically will manage my project day-to-day - name and background
- Question 3: How are change orders handled, documented, and approved - before work starts
- Question 4: How do you pre-qualify subcontractors and who are your core trades in this market
- Question 5: Walk me through a recent project from pre-construction to closeout - what went wrong and how you handled it
The Question Most Clients Are Afraid to Ask
We asked Murtaza Khan, Director of Operations at Anchor Construction, the question that cuts through everything. If a client could only ask one question before signing, what should it be and why do most clients never ask it
Q: If a client could only ask a GC ONE question before signing, what should it be, and why do most clients never ask it?
"Walk me through exactly how you make money on my project. They are always hesitant to ask this." - Murtaza Khan, Director of Operations, Anchor Construction
The hesitation is real. Clients worry the question sounds confrontational, or that it will damage the relationship before the project starts. But Murtaza's point is precisely the opposite: a GC who answers this question clearly and without defensiveness is telling you something important about how they operate. A GC who deflects, gets vague, or pivots to talking about their track record instead of their model is also telling you something important.
Here is why the answer matters. A commercial GC typically makes money through a combination of general conditions markup, subcontractor markup, and sometimes a contractor's fee built into the contract price. The specifics vary by contract type lump sum, GMP, cost-plus - but the structure is always there. When a client understands it, they can evaluate whether the GC's financial incentives align with project success or conflict with it.
A GC who marks up change orders at a higher rate than the base contract has a financial incentive to let problems develop rather than catch them in pre-construction. A GC who is transparent about their model has already told you they are not hiding anything.
This is the foundation of what we look for when we talk about what developers should look for in a commercial general contractor in Texas financial transparency is the first signal of operational integrity.
Who Actually Manages Your Project Day-to-Day?
The person who presents in the sales meeting and the person who runs your project are often not the same person. This is one of the most common sources of client disappointment in commercial construction and one of the easiest to prevent with a single direct question.
Ask for the name and background of the project manager who will be on your job specifically. Then ask how many other projects that PM is running simultaneously. The answer tells you whether your project is getting a dedicated resource or a fraction of one.
What to listen for:
- A strong answer names the PM, gives their experience on similar project types, and confirms their current workload.
- A weak answer talks about the company's team in general, defers to 'we will assign someone,' or cannot confirm the PM's current capacity.
- A red flag the same senior person who sold you the job will 'oversee' it, but a junior PM you have not met will actually run it.
In active Texas markets like Houston, DFW, and Dallas, experienced project managers are in short supply. A GC who cannot answer this question specifically either does not have the PM capacity to staff your project properly or is not being transparent about who will actually be managing it.
How Are Change Orders Handled and Who Approves Them?
Change orders are where most commercial construction budgets get away from clients. Not because change orders are inherently bad, they are sometimes unavoidable, but because the process for handling them is often unclear until a dispute is already happening.
Ask for the change order process in writing before you sign. Here is what a rigorous process looks like, step by step:
1. Written documentation first. No work happens outside the original scope until a written change order is issued, reviewed, and signed by both parties. Verbal authorizations are not change orders.
2. Pricing transparency. The GC provides an itemized breakdown of the cost: labor, materials, equipment, and markup. You should know exactly what you are paying for before you approve.
3. Schedule impact assessment. Every change order should include not just the cost but the schedule impact. A change that adds three weeks to your timeline is not the same as one that adds only cost.
4. Defined approval chain. Who on your side has authority to approve a change order, and up to what dollar amount? Who on the GC side has authority to execute? Both should be defined in the contract.
5. Tracking and reporting. Change orders should appear in regular project reports, so you always know the current approved contract value versus the original budget.
A GC who cannot walk you through this process before the contract is signed has not built it yet. That is a project risk, not a paperwork issue.
How Do You Pre-Qualify the Subcontractors Who Will Actually Build This?
The GC you hire does not build your project. Their subcontractors do. The quality of the sub network and the GC's relationships within it, determines more about your project outcome than almost anything else.
Ask specifically about subcontractor pre-qualification. What is the process? What are the minimum requirements for insurance, licensing, and experience? How long have the core subs been working with this GC? And critically: are these the subs who will actually be on this job, or are they examples of who the GC works with generally?
In markets like Houston and Dallas-Fort Worth, where commercial construction activity is at multi-year highs, the best subcontractors are committed months in advance. A GC who does not have confirmed sub relationships for your project at contract signing is telling you they will be competing for available subs after the fact in a market where availability is already tight.
This is one of the central challenges we cover in our breakdown of what breaks large retail construction programs in Texas subcontractor capacity is the failure mode that most developers do not see coming.
Can You Walk Me Through a Recent Project From Pre-Construction to Closeout?
This is the question that separates GCs who know how to build from GCs who know how to sell. A project story is easy to tell when everything went perfectly. The telling question is what the GC does with the version that did not.
Ask for a project that had a significant challenge a schedule problem, a design issue, a subcontractor failure, a client-requested scope change that was costly. Then ask how the GC identified it, communicated it, and resolved it. The answer tells you more about how they operate under pressure than any reference call will.
What to listen for:
- Specific details dates, dollar amounts, what the problem actually was. Vague answers suggest the GC is not comfortable with the specifics.
- Early identification the best GCs catch problems in pre-construction or early in the build, before they compound.
- Client communication was the client informed immediately when a problem developed, or after it was already resolved? The first approach is the right one.
- Honest ownership did the GC take responsibility for the parts that were their fault, or did the story involve a lot of blame for the owner, the designer, or the subs?
A GC who can tell this story clearly, with specifics and without deflection, is a GC who has built a culture of accountability on their projects. That is exactly what you need before you sign.
Why Does Any of This Matter More in Texas Than Anywhere Else?
Texas is the most active commercial construction market in the country right now. More retail space is being built here than in any other state. Houston, Dallas-Fort Worth, and Austin are running simultaneously at high capacity. The stakes for choosing the right GC are higher here than in slower markets - because the cost of a wrong choice compounds faster.
A GC with weak sub relationships in a tight DFW market cannot call their way out of a capacity problem. A GC without a rigorous change order process in a high-activity Houston corridor will accumulate overruns faster than the client can catch them. A GC who does not do localized pre-construction analysis per site will discover the civil engineering problems after the concrete is poured.
The questions Murtaza outlined are not a checklist for finding a perfect GC. They are a filter for identifying the GCs who are operating with the discipline and transparency that a commercial project in Texas demands.
At Anchor Construction, these are the standards we hold ourselves to on every project we execute across Houston, DFW, Austin, San Antonio, and Corpus Christi. If you want to see what that looks like in practice, you can explore our commercial construction portfolio across Texas.
The Bottom Line Before You Sign
The GC evaluation process does not have to be adversarial. The right GC will welcome every one of these questions - because they are already operating with the answers built into their process.
The ones who deflect, get vague, or pivot away from specifics are giving you the most important information of all: that they have not built the systems that would let them answer clearly.
Ask the uncomfortable question first. Walk me through exactly how you make money on my project. The answer will tell you everything you need to know about the questions that come after.
Planning a commercial project in Texas? Let's have the conversation.
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