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How to save money on commercial flooring

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HOW TO SAVE MONEY ON COMMERCIAL FLOORING: value engineering, better materials and smarter solutionsCommercial flooring is no small investment. As a core element that ties together your interior design, your floor says a lot about your business to customers, employees, partners and the community. You want one that looks good, lasts and makes a positive statement as a cohesive part of your overarching design. But between the cost of materials and the separate cost of flooring installation, flooring projects can total several hundred thousand or even millions of dollars.

At Spectra Contract Flooring, we’ve completed more than 350,000 commercial flooring installations. In the process, we’ve developed proven strategies to help owners save money on flooring materials and capture maximum value from their flooring. In this guide, we reveal some of the most effective strategies used by many of the nation’s leading and most forward-thinking companies to get the best bang for the buck on flooring.

 

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Build value engineering into your project from the startWhether you’re simply upgrading your flooring or you’re procuring flooring as part of a larger construction project, the best opportunity to capture savings and value is at the beginning, during planning and design. The reason? Design decisions made early in a project dictate the selection of building materials, including flooring, which greatly impacts both your up-front material costs and the way your contractor can install the materials, another determinant of cost.

You can find savings early in your project by incorporating the process of value engineering, a coordinated and purposeful method of identifying the best-value solutions to fit your budget, design and facility environment. Value engineering can apply to all aspects of a construction project. In the case of flooring, you have an expert from your flooring installation contractor work with you and your design team to determine the best-value flooring solutions. This flooring expert provides specialty knowledge of materials that architects and interior design teams often lack — in today’s complex projects, design teams have hundreds of other project elements to consider and typically don’t employ true flooring experts. By contrast, flooring contractors have individuals who learn about flooring materials each day and regularly evaluate new materials in floorings mills.

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To bring value engineering into the designs and material specifications, your commercial flooring contractor will follow a set process of gathering key information about your project, researching solutions and specifying flooring materials. They’ll typically ask you and your design team some key questions, including:

• What are the different functions the space must support?

• What kind of wear and tear will the space see?

• How long do you plan to use your facility?

• What look do you want to achieve?

• What kind of message do you want to convey?

• And other questions specific to your aesthetic and project

Once your flooring contractor has a good understanding of your design vision, how the space will be used and how long you’ll be there, they’ll use their expertise to create performance specifications that flooring materials must meet. Next, they’ll leverage their understanding of the products in the market and partnerships with suppliers to identify specific flooring options. Based on your desired aesthetic, the pricing available and manufacturers’ capabilities to produce the required materials reliably and on schedule, your contractor then specifies best-value flooring solutions. By working with a contractor that has partnerships with a wide range of suppliers, you’ll receive unbiased recommendations that match your aesthetic.

In many cases, you can achieve a desired appearance with cost-effective materials. For example, we recently completed a project in which we recommended and used porcelain where the architect had originally specified stone tile.

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Our alternative material met all performance requirements and saved the owner $200,000.

In some cases, confusion can arise when flooring manufacturers make unclear unit price bids that turn out to be higher than originally expected. By incorporating value engineering from an experienced flooring contractor into your project from the start, you can ensure you get accurate pricing on materials.

Source materials through your flooring contractor for better pricingThrough the process of value engineering, you can be assured of getting the best-value flooring solutions and the most cost-effective products. To get the best price on those materials, you’ll be best served to have them sourced and ordered directly by your flooring contractor for several reasons.

One, flooring contractors buy materials in bulk on a regular basis and can leverage partnerships with manufacturers to attain favorable pricing. Two, flooring contractors know the value of different flooring materials and can negotiate with manufacturers. Three, you get unbiased recommendations on which manufacturer offers the most favorable pricing — especially when you use bigger flooring contractors that have partnerships with many suppliers. In addition, you can avoid pitfalls, since flooring contractors have a good feel for which manufacturers stand behind their products with quality warranties.

The biggest flooring contractors will also provide you value-added benefits when they source materials for you. Typically, the longer a project lasts, the more it costs. So, keeping your project on track with smart planning can save

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you both time and money. Quality flooring contractors will coordinate material procurement on the appropriate lead times to ensure all materials arrive on the job site at the right time. In addition, they’ll stage materials and provide logistics management to help keep the job site clear and organized. This helps contractors complete the overall project on time and on budget.

At Spectra Contract Flooring, we take the additional step of helping you preserve your cash flow during a project. We allow you to finance the purchase of flooring materials through us — paying us back as we complete your project. 

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Incorporate life cycle costing in your decision-makingWhen you purchase commercial flooring, there are hidden costs above and beyond the up-front price of materials and installation. Depending on the flooring you select and the length of time you expect to use your facility, long-term flooring maintenance costs can exceed up-front material costs. Certain products need only minimum maintenance and are cost-effective long term, while others wear down quickly and require regular waxing, stripping, polishing, refinishing or replacement. For that reason, your material selection should incorporate the use of life cycle costing.

Life cycle costing is a formal report that compares the long-term costs of flooring options, accounting for up-front costs, long-term maintenance costs, replacement costs and the time value of money. While the vast majority of general contractors don’t offer this analysis, your flooring contractor should be able to use life cycle costing to put hard numbers behind your decision-making. It’s particularly useful in comparing sustainable flooring options and is often used for flooring decisions in healthcare and school settings.

Invest in testing and surface preparation or alternative materials At Spectra Contract Flooring, we test flooring underlayment as part of every project. The reason? If a floor is installed over an underlayment that has excessive moisture or high alkalinity, your flooring adhesive or the floor itself could be destroyed. Excessive moisture can also cause a foul smell when it gets into the backing and adhesive of carpeting. Testing allows us to determine if the underlayment presents any moisture or alkalinity risks ahead of time.

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In addition, manufacturers put warranties on their products, but most warranties are void if the underlayment isn’t tested. They’ll also be void if the underlayment is tested and shown to present risks but those risks aren’t mitigated. To protect your floor, preserve its warranties and reduce significant repair and maintenance costs, you’ll need to invest in testing. If issues are found, you’ll typically need your flooring contractor to provide surface preparation to mitigate the risks present in your underlayment.

In some cases, your flooring contractor may be able to save you money both long term and short term by identifying the risks and specifying alternative materials or adhesive systems that will last and not have voided warranties.

Have your flooring contractor use value engineering to limit cost overruns on the back endFlooring installation is typically one of the last elements of a larger construction or renovation project. As such, it’s often subject to the development and execution of the rest of the project. If other trades put the project behind schedule, your flooring contractor will have to make accommodations to install flooring more quickly. If cost overruns pinch your budget in other areas of a project, you may need to save on flooring materials later. Sometimes, architectural drawings leave ambiguities in the way flooring (and other job-site elements) should be executed.

A quality, experienced flooring contractor can solve these challenges.

In cases of design ambiguities, your flooring contractor will examine the architectural specifications and find solutions later in the process. This can range from working with a

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fabricator to create custom solutions that fit a challenging design to specifying material alternatives.

In other instances, your flooring contractor may work with your flooring manufacturers to reduce the cost of materials late in the project. In these instances, manufacturers often don’t know they’re over budget until they get a call from the flooring contractor. By simply having your contractor get in contact with manufacturers and inform them the project is over budget, the manufacturers can often do better on the pricing. Sometimes, they can reduce the price on a flooring product because they didn’t price it aggressively up front. Other times, they can use value engineering to find a more cost-effective alternative material. This is also a time where your flooring contractor and manufacturers can clear up anything the manufacturers may not have fully represented in earlier price estimates.

If you simply can’t find cost savings with the previously selected manufacturers, you can have your flooring contractor open bidding to alternative manufacturers.

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MORE ABOUT SPECTRA CONTRACT FLOORINGWith more than 30 locations nationwide, Spectra Contract Flooring is the largest specialty, commercial flooring contractor in the U.S. We partner with a wide range of flooring manufacturers to provide an extensive library of flooring solutions at the best possible prices. From material identification and risk assessment to project management and rapid, cost-effective installation, our experienced flooring specialists manage the entire flooring process. We provide design-fresh, budget-conscious solutions. And we help you achieve the greatest value for your flooring investment.

If you’re looking for a flooring solution, speak with some of our seasoned flooring professionals. Click here to request a flooring consultation. Or, learn more about Spectra Contract Flooring here.