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Across the Table: The Commercial Field Manual · ← 03 The walk · 05 The long middle →

All parts: 01 Before you drive · 02 The room · 03 The walk · 04 Paperwork and the climb · 05 The long middle · 06 When it goes sideways · 07 Your own system · Carry cards

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A signature does nothing at two in the morning. Getting through the gate and into the call tree is what makes an account real.

A RocketLevel piece for the people who walk commercial buildings, backed by decades of experience in the trade. About a 13-minute read.

4.1 Find the gate early

Plenty of commercial accounts have a layer you cannot see from the lobby. In managed property it is usually an asset management or corporate group holding the approved vendor list. In national retail, restaurant and hotel brands it is corporate or a regional facilities group. In government and education it is procurement, and sometimes the scope is already bought through a cooperative contract that will not come up for years. In healthcare it is supply chain plus infection prevention.

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The trap. The site manager can like you, take your meeting, want to hire you, and still be unable to send a single dollar of work until you are approved. Skip this and you will spend six months building a relationship with someone who cannot buy anything, and you will not be able to explain to your owner why nothing closed.

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Two things bite only on public work, and both of them bite late. Government, education and anything carrying federal or state money runs on rules that have nothing to do with how good you are. Find out which apply before you price the job, not after you win it.

Bonding. On a federal construction contract the Miller Act requires performance and payment bonds, and the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) at FAR 28.102-1 draws the line at contracts exceeding $150,000, with alternative payment protections between $35,000 and $150,000. States run their own versions with their own thresholds, so look up yours rather than assuming the federal number travels. Two things follow. A bond is underwritten against the balance sheet, which means no salesperson can commit one. Surety capacity is a conversation with your owner and your agent before you chase the work. And the trap specific to this trade is selling the mitigation, which usually carries no bond, and then finding a bond requirement attached to the reconstruction award, which is the part with the money in it.

Prevailing wage. The Davis-Bacon Act covers federal contracts over $2,000 for the construction, alteration or repair of public buildings and public works, and a long list of Related Acts extends it to federally assisted work, which is how jobs funded by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) get caught. States have their own versions covering state and local work at their own thresholds.

One correction worth carrying, because reps get told the opposite. Davis-Bacon does not apply to Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Public Assistance (PA). FEMA's own FY24 Contract Provisions Guide, FI-207-21-0001 Version 2, effective 1 October 2024 names the FEMA programs it does reach and states that the Davis-Bacon clause is not federally required for procurements under the Public Assistance Program. Storm work funded through PA is not automatically prevailing wage work.

The qualifying question is one line: "Is any part of this funded federally or by the state, and if so, under what program?" Ask it before you price the labor. The wage basis is not something you can correct on the back end, and neither is a bond you cannot get.

These numbers tell you whether a rule applies. If it does, the deadlines that follow, the bond claim notice and the suit limit on federal work and the notice and filing windows everywhere else, live in The Per-Job Lien and Notice Calendar, which is the single copy of them in this library. Open one the day the job opens.

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Approved and preferred are two different things, and the gap between them is where the work is. An approved vendor gets considered. A preferred vendor gets called. Approval makes you eligible, and nothing more. Everything in 4.4 below is about converting one into the other. Vendor Approval and Preferred Vendor Status is the page on that distinction.

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4.2 Run the approval with named owners and dates

Start it the week you learn about it. Working ranges from the programs we run, not a published benchmark: four to eight weeks after sponsorship at a national or large regional management firm, one to three weeks at a smaller regional, and days at an independent or owner-managed building.

Note what that first number hangs on. Sponsorship is the step reps skip. Many vendor portals will not open a vendor record at all until somebody inside the company requests it, so the clock does not start when you submit, it starts when your champion puts the request in. Ask for it directly: "Would you be willing to submit the request on your side, or can you tell me who does?"

The platform itself is rarely what takes the time. Where a turnaround is published at all it is measured in days. RealPage's own Vendor Quick Steps Guide states that documents are processed within 24 to 48 hours as long as the annual enrollment fee is current, and the same guide says enrollment does not guarantee your approval. Read that window as document processing, not as a decision on your file. The safety prequalification platforms publish no figure. What takes the time is your own package and the specific client's requirement set, which every hiring client configures separately. Where we have seen an approval run past a month, the delay was almost always a missing or rejected written safety program.

• [ ] Know your own package cold. Certificates with the right limits, additional insured and primary and noncontributory endorsements, waiver of subrogation, workers comp with employers liability limits, umbrella or excess, contractors pollution liability, auto, W-9, licensing, and your safety numbers. The limits we see a landlord's schedule ask for: general liability 1M per occurrence and 2M aggregate at the low end, rising to 2M to 5M per occurrence at institutional owners, auto 1M combined single limit, umbrella or excess 2M to 5M with 10M showing up at some institutional accounts, workers comp statutory with 500K to 1M employer's liability, and contractors pollution liability 1M where mold or Category 3 water is in scope. For a real published one, American Assets Trust's vendor insurance schedule dated 27 July 2025 requires $3,000,000 each occurrence and $4,000,000 aggregate, employer's liability at $1,000,000, professional liability at $1,000,000 where professional services are provided, and cyber at $1,000,000 where the vendor touches owner systems. Your agent should price the schedule your target accounts actually require, and confirm with your agent before you promise a limit in writing.
• [ ] Buy the two lines that fail certificate review, because neither one is a liability limit. The first is crime or fidelity coverage. Your crews hold keys and work unsupervised in occupied buildings, so the landlord wants employee-dishonesty cover, and the American Assets schedule sets it at $500,000 per occurrence. Plenty of shops do not carry it and find out at review. The second is a cap on your deductible or self-insured retention. That same schedule caps it at $25,000. A high retention is a legitimate way to hold premium down and it is also why a submitted certificate comes back rejected. In our experience these two get refused more often than limits do. Ask your agent today, in writing, what your crime limit is and what your retention is, so neither is a surprise the day a schedule lands.
• [ ] Know the difference between a certificate and an endorsement, because a risk manager will test you on it. A certificate of insurance is information only and confers no rights on the holder. Only an additional insured endorsement actually adds them to the policy. And additional insured splits in two: Insurance Services Office (ISO) form CG 20 10 covers ongoing operations and CG 20 37 covers completed operations. If you do reconstruction, CG 20 37 is the one that matters after the job closes, and it is the one that often gets left off. Same logic on waiver of subrogation: it only does anything if the endorsement is in force at the time of the loss, so get it issued before you set foot on the property and confirm it covers the specific project or a blanket of them. Ask your agent which of these your policy will actually carry.
• [ ] Call it contractors pollution liability, not "pollution coverage." General liability forms commonly carry a fungi and bacteria exclusion, the ISO version being form CG 21 67 Fungi or Bacteria Exclusion, which is what makes contractors pollution liability the coverage that decides whether a Category 3 or mold job is insured at all. Pull your own policy and find that exclusion before you answer a prequalification question about it.
• [ ] Every open item gets a named owner and a date, never just "we're working on it."