Hiring · 7 min read · AE Building Design
The difference between contractors is rarely the quality of the tile. It is whether the right trades arrive in the right order, whether the inspection was booked in advance, and whether someone tells you early when a date is going to move.
Verify the license yourself
Florida licenses are public. You can check any contractor's license number, status and complaint history through the Department of Business and Professional Regulation in about a minute. Ask for the number, then verify it rather than taking a logo on a truck as evidence.
Also ask for a certificate of insurance showing general liability and workers' compensation, issued directly by the insurer. AE Building Design holds Florida Certified Residential Contractor license CRC1334542 and provides certificates before any contract is signed.
What a real proposal contains
A proposal worth comparing is itemized. It names the scope line by line, specifies materials rather than leaving open allowances, sets out a payment schedule tied to milestones, and includes a dated sequence of work. If a quote is a single number on one page, you cannot compare it to anything and you cannot hold anyone to it.
Watch allowances in particular. A low bid often carries allowance figures well below what you will actually select, and the difference arrives later as change orders.
Questions worth asking
- Who is on site day to day, and who do I call when something is wrong?
- Which trades are your own people and which are subcontracted?
- Who pulls the permits and who schedules inspections?
- What happens to the schedule if an inspection fails?
- How are change orders priced and approved — before or after the work?
Warning signs
Large deposits up front. Reluctance to pull permits, or a suggestion that the work does not need one. No written schedule. A bid dramatically below the others. Pressure to decide quickly. Each of these predicts a difficult project far more reliably than any portfolio.
Permits, HOA and inspections
In South Florida, permitting and association approval are a real part of the timeline. A contractor who handles submissions, knows what each municipality asks for, and books inspections ahead of the work reaching them will finish faster than one who treats paperwork as an afterthought — regardless of how fast they swing a hammer.
In-house crews versus rotating subs
Every handoff between trades is a place where tolerance, schedule and accountability can be lost. The more of the work a contractor completes with their own people, the fewer of those handoffs exist. It is not a guarantee of quality, but it is a strong signal about how the job will be run.
Check the work, not just the photos
Portfolios show finished rooms in good light. Ask to see a project in progress instead. Is the site protected and organized? Are tools cleared at the end of the day? That tells you more about what living through the build will feel like than any completed photograph.