Greater Lansing

Government & public facility repairs

Most public repair work never goes out to bid — it sits under a purchasing threshold, on a list, waiting for somebody small enough to want it.

What is actually wrong

Most people assume every dollar a public body spends goes out to sealed bid, and that assumption is where a company this size gets written off before anybody has looked at the work. It is not how purchasing runs. Every public agency in Michigan has a figure below which a department can buy directly, and a second figure below which it only has to collect a few quotes. Those figures are published, they are not small, and almost everything underneath them is ordinary repair work.

The numbers are worth having before you call. The City of Lansing’s purchasing rules let a department head buy directly under $3,000 and ask for a minimum of three quotations from $3,000 up to $24,999.99. A Michigan school district has to competitively bid construction, renovation, repair or remodeling only above a base that is reset every year against inflation under the Revised School Code — $31,321 for the year running October 2025 to September 2026. Federal purchasing moved on 1 October 2025 to a $15,000 micro-purchase threshold, under which a cardholder may simply buy, and a $350,000 simplified acquisition threshold above that. Every agency sets and amends its own, so the figure published on the day you ask is the one that governs.

The second line is bonding, and it is the one that actually stops small contractors. Michigan’s public works bond act requires a performance bond and a payment bond before any contract over $50,000 for the construction, alteration or repair of a public building or public work is awarded — for the state, a county, a city, a village, a township, a school district, a public educational institution or a public authority — each at no less than 25 percent of the contract amount. A bond is a surety relationship underwritten on a balance sheet and a work history. It is not a product you buy on a Tuesday afternoon because a bid closes on Friday.

Which is the honest reason this page exists. Below those two lines sits a large amount of unglamorous work that the contractors built for public bidding do not want: a door at a township hall that has not latched since spring, gutters coming off a pole barn, a corridor that needs drywall and paint, an accessibility handrail that failed an inspection. It is too small to be worth their mobilization and too persistent to keep ignoring, so it gets re-quoted, deferred, and carried on a buildings list for two years. That is the work being asked for here.

Where this stops

When it is not a handyman job

This is at the top of the page rather than the bottom because getting it wrong costs you a wasted visit. Insured, and no contractor license is claimed or implied — the Michigan residential builder license is not held.

NO SURETY BOND, SO NOTHING OVER $50,000. Michigan’s public works bond act requires performance and payment bonds above that figure and this company does not have a surety line yet. It is a real limit on what can be accepted and it is published here rather than discovered at award. It is being worked on; until it exists, the ceiling is the ceiling.
THE MICHIGAN RESIDENTIAL BUILDER LICENSE IS NOT HELD. It governs residential structures, and a township hall, a fire station or a school is not one — so it is not the gate on most public facility work. Public housing is a residential structure, which means housing commission units and similar stock sit outside what this company takes until that license is held.
NOT REGISTERED IN SAM.GOV. Federal prime contracting requires an entity registration this company has not completed. Federally funded work passing through a state or local agency is a separate question governed by that agency’s own rules, and it is worth asking rather than assuming either way.
THE TRADE LINES DO NOT MOVE FOR A PUBLIC CUSTOMER. Electrical is repair and like-for-like replacement on existing circuits. Mechanical work is not offered at all. Shingles and steep-slope roofing are not ours. A public buyer gets the same boundaries and the same referrals as a homeowner does.
WE DO NOT SPLIT A JOB TO GET IT UNDER A THRESHOLD. If the work in front of us is one project that belongs above a bidding line, it goes above the line and we either bid it properly or we do not take it. Breaking it into pieces to stay under a limit is improper purchasing, and the person who carries that is the buyer, not the contractor who suggested it.

The work itself

What actually gets done

Quoting in writing against your own work order numbering, so the quote, the invoice and the completion report all read against the document your system issued rather than against a description we invented.

Supplying what a purchasing file needs without being chased for it — a W-9, a certificate of insurance with the agency named where that is required, and lien waivers at completion.

Invoicing against a purchase order with the PO number on the invoice, and not starting work that has no PO behind it. A contractor who works first and asks afterwards creates a problem for the person who has to pay the invoice.

Photographing every item before and after, numbered to match the work order, because a public file has to be able to show what was bought with the money.

Working around occupancy. Public buildings have opening hours and people in them, and the schedule is built around both rather than around our convenience.

Naming at quote stage which items fall outside our trades and need a licensed electrician, plumber or mechanical contractor — so the gap is in the quote, not discovered in week two.

This work sits inside General Repairs, which carries the invoiced price bands for the trade with the sample size printed beside every figure.

What it costs

There is no price list for this, and here is what actually decides the number.

The same three words describe a twenty-minute job and a two-day one. Rather than publish a figure that is wrong for one of them, here is what moves it — so you can work out roughly which end of it you are at before anybody comes out.

Whether the job sits under your direct-purchase limit or has to be quoted competitively. That changes the paperwork and the timeline rather than the work itself.

Whether prevailing wage applies. On projects sponsored or financed by the State it does, and it raises the labor line, sometimes substantially. The contracting agency determines whether a project is covered — the contractor does not — and the answer belongs in the request for quotes rather than in a conversation after award.

Access and hours. The same work in an occupied building after closing costs more than it does in an empty one on a Tuesday morning, and on some sites there is no choice about which it is.

Whether the agency is supplying the materials. It is common on public work for the body to buy the kit on its own account and buy only labor and incidentals from a contractor, and that turns the quote into a labor quote.

How many separate buildings or sites one list covers. Mobilizing to six of them is a different job from a long list at one of them.

How to get a real number

Somebody comes out, looks at it properly, and you get a fixed price in writing with the work set out line by line and the exclusions written down as plainly as the inclusions. Coming out to do that is not charged for, and neither is working out what is wrong. If something is found once a wall or a floor is open, it is priced as a written change order and you decide before the work carries on rather than after it is billed. Materials are supplied at cost with the receipt attached, first-time customers get 10% off labor, and labor carries a one-year craftsmanship warranty.

If this is happening right now

What to do in the next five minutes, and what happens when you ring.

Before anybody arrives

Send the work order or item list in your own numbering rather than a summary of it. The numbers are what the quote, the photographs and the completion report all get written against.
Say whether a purchase order already exists and what its ceiling is. A quote written to a known ceiling is a useful document; one written blind usually has to be written twice.
Find out whether the project is sponsored or financed by the State in any part, including school aid or qualified bond money. That is the prevailing wage question and your finance office can usually answer it in a sentence.
Set out the access: opening hours, who holds keys, which rooms are occupied, and whether any of it has to happen outside normal hours.
Say whether you are supplying materials or expecting the contractor to.
Send any insurance limits or endorsements your purchasing file requires at the start. Having an endorsement added takes days, and finding out about it at award is the ordinary way a small award falls over.

Call the business line

(517) 505-7135

Answered Monday to Friday, 08:00 to 18:00. There is no out-of-hours line and this page is not going to invent one — outside those hours, leave a message with the address and what is happening, and it is picked up in the morning.

On the call you get asked what is happening, what else in the building is affected, and whether it is still getting worse. That is how it gets decided whether this is our job at all — and if it is not, you get told that on the phone rather than after somebody has driven out.

No trip charge
No call-out fee or minimum
No diagnostic fee
No charge for a return visit

True across all 84 written quotes this company has issued. Most contractors in this market charge to turn up.

Or send the details

When the right answer is not this company

You can smell gas: Leave the building and call the utility from outside. Not us, and not later.
Water you cannot stop: Your main shut-off first, then a licensed plumber. Every minute of this one costs money.
Sewage backing up, or several fixtures at once: A licensed plumber with a camera. That is the shared line, not a fixture, and a cable down one sink will not touch it.
Sparking, scorching or a burning smell at an outlet or a panel: Breaker off, and a licensed electrician. Electrical work here is repair and like-for-like replacement, and this is neither.
No heat, or heating and cooling equipment that has failed: A licensed mechanical contractor. That trade is not offered here at all, and knowing that in one phone call is worth more than a visit.

Questions people actually ask

Have you done public sector work before?

Not yet as a direct contract, and it would be easy to imply otherwise on a page like this. What we have is a quote: a middle school courtyard pavilion in June 2026, around fifteen hundred dollars, where the district was buying the kit and buying the installation from us. It is on hold until their next budget year. The work behind this page is the repair and maintenance work this company already does every week for commercial property managers and for two national facilities networks — what is new is the customer being a public body and the paperwork that comes with that. If a reference from a private commercial client would help your file, ask and you will get one.

Are you bonded?

No. There is no surety line in place, which means contracts over the $50,000 statutory bond threshold are not ones this company can accept. Below it, no bond is required and the question does not arise. General liability is carried at $1,000,000 per occurrence and $2,000,000 aggregate, and a certificate naming your agency can be issued — tell us the exact wording your file needs, because a certificate with the wrong named insured is the same as no certificate.

Do we have to put it out to bid?

That is your purchasing rules to answer, not ours, and the thresholds differ by agency and move over time. The general shape is that there is a figure below which you may buy directly, a band above it where a few written quotes suffice, and a point above that where a formal solicitation is required. What we will not do is help structure a job to stay under one of those lines.

How does prevailing wage work on a small job?

Michigan reinstated prevailing wage on state projects effective 13 February 2024. Where a project is sponsored or financed by the State, covered workers have to be paid the rates and fringes prevailing locally for that class of work, and certified payroll records go to the contracting agent — with online submission required from April 2026. For a contractor it is a pricing input and a record-keeping obligation rather than a reason to decline. Tell us at quote stage whether the project is covered and the number reflects it; tell us afterwards and the number has to change.

Can you work in a building while it is open to the public?

Yes, and most of this work is that. It changes the sequencing more than the price — barriers and clean-down at the end of each day rather than at the end of the job, dust control where people are walking past, and tools never left out in a public space. Where a task genuinely cannot be done safely around people it gets scheduled outside opening hours and priced that way, and we will say which tasks those are in the quote rather than deciding it on site.

How do we get on your list, or you onto ours?

Send the vendor registration link and it gets completed. Several agencies in this region notify registered vendors directly instead of publishing, so for those the registration is the only way the work is ever visible — being on the list is the whole mechanism, not a formality on top of one.

Send us the work order

The useful first message is the item list in your own numbering, whether a purchase order already exists and what its ceiling is, and whether any part of the project is financed by the State — that last one is the prevailing wage question and it changes the number. If your purchasing file needs particular insurance wording or a vendor registration completed first, say so now rather than at award.

Get a Free Quote Call (517) 505-7135