Commercial Construction

Earth Saving Solutions handles tenant improvements from a few hundred to roughly 75,000 square feet, ground-up commercial from 1,500 to 60,000 square feet, and renovation/restoration on existing commercial buildings of any size we're licensed to work in. We have completed work for national brands including Circle K and Walmart and run multi-site programs across the Denver metro and the Front Range. Projects with prevailing-wage requirements, federal funding, or specialized industrial scopes (data center, cleanroom, heavy industrial) we will assess on a case-by-case basis and tell you up front whether we are the right fit.

Denver-jurisdiction commercial permits run through the Community Planning and Development department and typically take 4 to 12 weeks for plan review on a standard TI, longer if zoning, planning, or transportation review is triggered. Suburban jurisdictions (Aurora, Lakewood, Centennial, the unincorporated counties) each run their own intake — timelines vary 3 to 16 weeks. We submit, walk plan-review comments through, pick up the permit, and post it on site. The permit fee structure varies by jurisdiction and is usually pass-through cost on the GC contract.

Often no. We routinely work in occupied commercial spaces using temporary partitions, off-hours work windows, dust- and noise-control measures (negative-air containment for any demo or drywall work), and phased turnover so business operations continue. The phased approach costs more in labor than working a closed shell, and the schedule extends, but for a tenant who cannot afford a closure window it is the standard approach. We map the phasing in the pre-construction meeting and walk it with you before contracting.

A GMP is a contract price that caps the owner's exposure: the GC commits not to exceed the agreed number for the agreed scope, and any savings under the GMP are typically shared between owner and GC by a contracted formula. The GMP is usually signed at the end of design development, after enough drawings are in hand to bid the major trades but before the construction-document phase finishes. Signing a GMP earlier (at schematic design) trades price-certainty for higher contingency; signing it later (at 100% CDs) gives a tighter number but loses the schedule overlap that makes design-build worth choosing.

No — a design-build entity carries the architectural, engineering, and construction responsibility under one contract. We work with a stable of licensed architects and MEP/structural engineers and bring them in as part of the design-build team. If you already have a relationship with an architect you want to keep, we can run a design-bid-build delivery model instead and bid construction against the architect's documents. Either model works; the choice depends on your timeline, your relationships, and how you want to allocate risk.

Change orders happen on every commercial project and the question is how they are managed, not how they are avoided. On our jobs, every change is logged in writing within 48 hours with a description, a price, a schedule impact, and an owner-signature line; nothing changes in the field until the change order is signed. We push back on owner-initiated changes that we think are scope creep on someone else's idea, and we'll tell you when an architect-issued bulletin is a clarification (no cost) versus a change (costs). We close out the change-order log at substantial completion as part of project closeout.

We hold a Colorado commercial general contractor license, general liability insurance, workers compensation insurance for every employee on site, and commercial auto coverage for our fleet. For projects that require performance and payment bonds, we have an established surety relationship and can bond projects up to our surety's underwriting capacity — for larger or multi-project programs we will pre-qualify the bond capacity at the proposal stage. Builder's risk insurance is usually owner-furnished but we coordinate the policy with the lender.

Pre-construction covers feasibility studies, conceptual estimating, value engineering, schedule development, permit-strategy planning, and constructability review of the architect's drawings as they progress. On design-build jobs, pre-construction is part of the integrated services and rolled into the GMP. On design-bid-build jobs, pre-construction is sometimes a separate fee (typically 0.5 to 2 percent of estimated construction value) so the owner gets independent estimating and constructability input before committing to a final design. We discuss this at the proposal stage.