Free Field Guide · For Commercial GCs

Most Commercial Bids Wreck the CO Date.

You don’t find out until inspection day.

That is when it goes wrong.

The cheap landscaping number wins the bid. Eight weeks later the irrigation pressure test fails. The sod sits on pallets in the sun. The architect flags a plant substitution on the final walk. The owner asks why CO slipped a week, and your draw slips with it.

It happens to good GCs. PMs that did the homework. Estimators who thought the numbers worked.

The problem is not the bid. It is that nobody tells you what landscaping actually costs when it goes wrong. So we wrote it down.

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Free PDF · Includes RFP Template

The $100K-to-$200K Cost Cascade

The page-14 breakdown of how a cheap landscape bid quietly compounds into prep losses, mid-job collapse, closeout damage, and repair fees.

GC-Grade RFP and Scorecard

Send the same scope package to every landscaper. Score every bid on the same fifty criteria. Get apples-to-apples numbers your owner can defend.

CO Protected, Draw on Time

The walkthrough checklists, inspection sequencing, and closeout binder template that keep your project ahead of every irrigation, plant, and finish issue.

Why This Guide Exists

You are not the first PM this happened to.

We have walked sites with hundreds of commercial GCs.

Most of the time, we are not the first landscaper they have hired on a project. We are the second. Or the one called in the week before CO when the first crew stopped showing up. Each one came in cheaper than the last. Each one cost more than the last.

By the time a PM calls us, the conversation is rarely about plants. It is about a slipping CO, a draw that did not clear, and an owner who wants to know what happened to the schedule everyone signed off on in February.

It does not have to go this way. The first landscaper can be the right landscaper.

That is the whole reason we wrote this. The exact questions we wish every PM had asked the company before us. The RFP language that would have prevented the change orders. The way to read a landscape proposal so you know what you are actually buying before the trees show up half-dead.

Read it before your next bid award. Even if that decision is not us.

Inside The Guide

The frameworks your team can use this week.

Real tools. Real templates. Real numbers. Nothing filler.

The 9-step order of operations that protects your CO date.

Sleeves, irrigation, trees, hardscape, beds, sod, lighting, finish. The exact sequence your landscaper has to follow or the closeout slips.

The $100K bid that turns into $200K. Page by page.

Twelve real cost categories. Prep losses, mid-job collapse, closeout damage, repair fees. The savings that quietly cost double the original number.

The 10 red flags that show up before they bid.

The pre-bid signals that predict failed inspections, missed CO dates, and change-order fights. Including the one most PMs miss.

The 10-step selection process that filters out residential crews.

The exact questions that disqualify a landscaper before they cost you a week. Three questions catch most of them on the first call.

The one-page RFP template for landscape packages.

Pre-filled scope categories that force a real bid response. Saves hours per package and makes sure every landscaper competes on the same scope.

The 50-point evaluation scorecard.

The grading rubric that tells you whether to award or walk. Defensible math, twelve criteria, a number your owner can stand behind.

The walkthrough checklist that catches what the inspector will.

The pre-CO punch list that finds the missing sleeve, the dead palm, and the patchy edge before the city scheduler does.

The closeout binder template every package should require.

As-builts, irrigation map, warranties, photos, plant list. The handoff your owner expects, your inspector wants, and your draw needs.

Eight frameworks. One PDF. Free.

Read it before your next landscape bid award. Even if that decision is not us.

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Who It Is For

Built for the people who actually award the contract.

Project Managers

PMs running commercial builds where landscaping is the last scope on site and the first thing the owner sees.

Superintendents

Supers who have to live with the sequencing decisions PMs sign off on in the trailer six months earlier.

Estimators & VPs of Construction

The people pricing the bid and the people accountable for what happens after it is awarded.

Why Trust Us On This

We have been the company that closed it clean.

“

Half the GC jobs we get called in on are mid-project rescues. We got tired of cleaning up after the cheap bid. So we wrote the field guide we wish every PM had on day one.

— The Green Image Team

Green Image is the commercial landscape and tree service partner for general contractors building across Broward and Palm Beach counties.

We have walked sites where the wrong landscaper cost the GC a two-week CO delay. We have rebuilt landscape packages that should never have needed rebuilding. We know what the warning signs look like on a bid, because we have been called in to fix what they led to.

This guide is the framework we use ourselves. Read it. Use it. Award whoever is the right answer.

Ready to put the framework to work?

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Includes the 50-point evaluation scorecard
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