Built From the Contractor Side
I'm Keith Sundstrom
I’m Keith Sundstrom, founder of Tenant Improvement Licensed Contractors. My background includes owning and operating a restoration company, working with contractors across multiple trades, and eventually building marketing and business-development systems specifically for contractors.
That experience gave me an unusual view of the construction industry: I’ve seen the problem from both sides.
I’ve seen what happens when a customer needs qualified contractors but doesn’t know how to distinguish between companies that look similar online. I’ve also seen excellent contractors struggle to connect with the commercial projects that actually fit their capabilities.
I Saw a Problem That Was Bigger Than Lead Generation
Over time, a pattern became difficult to ignore.
The construction industry has plenty of contractors.
What it doesn’t always have is an efficient way of connecting the right contractor, with the right specialization, to the right commercial project, in the right market.
Tenant improvements make that problem especially obvious.
A significant commercial tenant improvement can involve a general contractor working alongside specialized professionals in:
01
Commercial HVAC
02
Plumbing
03
Electrical and lighting
04
Storefront and interior glass
05
Flooring and finishes
06
Restoration and reconstruction
07
Doors and access systems
08
Specialty commercial trades
And simply being licensed in a trade doesn’t mean every contractor is equally suited for every project.
A contractor may be exceptional at occupied office renovations but have little experience with medical facilities. Another may have the manpower for a large retail rollout but not the systems for a complicated phased renovation. Some companies are excellent installers but aren’t structured to estimate, communicate and manage larger commercial opportunities efficiently.
The problem wasn't finding contractors. The problem was matching capabilities to opportunities.
So We Started Building the System
My background in contractor marketing added another piece to the puzzle.
For years, I’ve studied how property owners and customers search for contractors, how contractors position themselves, and why qualified companies are sometimes nearly invisible while less-specialized companies receive the opportunity.
That led to a different idea.
Instead of building another website that simply generates a name and phone number, we could build an infrastructure around tenant improvement expertise.
One that combines contractor relationships, specialized trade knowledge, geographic coverage, commercial project information, search visibility, educational content and project opportunities.
That’s the foundation of Tenant Improvement Licensed Contractors.
Then We Started Assembling the Contractors
The network is being built around specialization.
We look for contractors who can tell us more than, ?Yes, we do commercial work.?
We want to understand:
What do you actually do exceptionally well?
What types of buildings do you work in?
What size projects are you equipped to handle?
How large is your field operation?
Where do you work?
Do you have estimating capacity?
Can you handle occupied buildings?
Can you perform phased work?
Do you provide emergency response?
Do you handle reconstruction?
What industries do you understand?
And perhaps most importantly:
What kind of tenant improvement project should we call you about first?
Those questions allow us to build something more useful than a list of contractors.
A Better Way to Approach Tenant Improvements
That’s ultimately what we’re trying to create.
Tenant Improvement Licensed Contractors brings together the people performing the work, the commercial buyers looking for expertise, and the information needed to make better project decisions.
For property owners, facility managers, tenants and general contractors, the objective is better access to specialized commercial expertise.
For participating contractors, the objective is different: create opportunities that actually fit their capabilities, geographic coverage and growth objectives.
And for us, the job is to keep building the infrastructure connecting those two sides.
I didn’t come into this industry looking to build another contractor directory.
I came from the contractor side, saw where the system wasn’t working, and decided to build a better one.
That’s what Tenant Improvement Licensed Contractors is becoming.
Licensed commercial general contractor serving tenant improvement and build-out projects across the San Francisco Bay Area.
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