How to Evaluate a Directional Drilling Contractor

Why is price the least informative signal?

A bid is a number attached to a set of assumptions. When two bids differ substantially, the difference is almost always in the assumptions rather than in the efficiency of the crews.

The productive question is not who is cheapest but what each bidder assumed. Restoration standard, permitting responsibility, potholing extent, documentation level and soil contingency account for most of the spread on a typical directional drilling bid.

Ask those five questions and the bids usually become comparable. Frequently the low bidder turns out to have excluded something you will pay for later, at a worse rate, under change order conditions. That is not a judgment about any one company. It is how bids behave when the scope leaves room for interpretation.

How do you put competing bids on equal terms?

Normalize the bids before you compare them. Send every bidder the same list of assumptions and ask for a written answer to each one alongside the price. A bidder that has priced an item states it. A bidder that has excluded it says so, and you can add a fair allowance to that bid before ranking.

The table below lists the assumptions that move directional drilling prices most often. None of them are exotic. They are simply the items most likely to be read differently by different estimators when the bid documents are silent.

What does the contractor actually self perform?

There is a real difference between a contractor performing work with its own crews and one coordinating subcontractors with a markup. Both are legitimate models, but they are different products and you should know which you are buying.

Self performed work usually gives the owner a shorter chain of control. When the same company employs the crew and sets the schedule, moving a start date or adding a shift is one conversation. It also tends to mean more consistent methods from the first bore on a route to the last, since the same people are doing the work.

Subcontracting has real advantages of its own: it adds capacity quickly and reaches places a single company's crews may not, which suits a large program spread across several markets. What deserves scrutiny is not the model itself. It is a bid that describes subcontracted work in language that suggests the bidder's own crews will do it.

• Ask which parts of the scope are performed by employed crews
• Ask which parts are subcontracted and to whom
• Ask who supervises the subcontracted portions on site
• Ask what happens to your schedule if a subcontractor is unavailable

How do they handle existing utilities?

This is the highest consequence question in underground construction and the one where practice varies most between contractors.

Everyone places Sunshine 811 tickets, because Florida Statute Chapter 556 requires it. What sets contractors apart is what happens after the marks are down. Locate marks show an approximate horizontal position within a tolerance zone and carry no depth information at all, so a contractor treating paint as an exact location is taking a risk with your project and with public safety.

The follow up question is about potholing. Where a bore path runs close to marked plant, physically exposing the utility, usually by vacuum excavation, is the only method that turns an approximation into a fact. It costs time, which is why it is the first thing dropped under schedule pressure. Ask where the contractor would pothole on your route and whether those holes are in the price.

Ask about clearance as well. A good answer names how much separation the crew plans to keep from crossed utilities, where that number comes from (the permit, the facility owner or the engineer of record), and how depth is confirmed while the pilot bore passes the crossing.

What should bore tracking and logging look like?

A good bore log records depth and position along the whole run, not just at the entry and exit. Walkover tracking reads a transmitter in the drill head and reports depth, pitch and position as the pilot bore advances. Those readings steer the bore, and when they are logged at regular intervals they become the depth record the owner keeps.

Ask how often readings are logged, who records them, and how they reach the as-built. Ask what the crew does where walkover tracking is not possible, such as under a waterway or a busy multilane road, and how the locator is checked before work starts. Interference from rebar, power lines and nearby metallic utilities can distort readings, and an experienced crew will describe how it handles that.

Then ask for a sample. A log that shows station, depth and pitch at steady intervals, with notes at each utility crossing, is the sign of a crew that tracks as a habit. A log with two numbers on it is a sign that the profile between them is unknown.

How does the contractor plan for Florida ground conditions?

Ask how the bore plan changes with the soil, because Florida ground varies sharply over short distances. Fine coastal sand collapses easily and needs drilling fluid that holds the hole open. A high water table floods pits and affects fluid handling. Limestone and clay each call for different tooling and fluid choices.

A contractor that works these conditions regularly will describe its fluid approach, how it sizes the reamer for the product and the ground, and what it does if fluid starts reaching the surface. Ask whether a containment plan for inadvertent returns is part of its standard setup, particularly near wetlands, ditches and waterways.

Listen for specifics tied to your route rather than general statements. A bidder that asks about soil borings, nearby water and past bores in the same corridor is planning the job. One that does not ask is assuming the ground will cooperate.

Why should you ask to see a closeout package?

This is the single most revealing request you can make, and remarkably few buyers make it.

Ask for a sample closeout package from a completed project, with client details redacted. What comes back tells you more than any capability statement.

Look at whether the as-built differs from the design drawing, because real construction produces changes and a package where they are identical is not an as-built. Look at whether bore logs show depth along the run or only at the endpoints. Look at whether photographs are keyed to a location or are an unsorted folder. Look at whether restoration photographs were taken after restoration or at the end of construction.

How do they behave when conditions change?

Every outside plant project finds something the drawings did not show. It might be a line nobody marked, a limestone ledge in a shot planned for sand, or pavers under what the plans called sod.

What matters is what happens next. A contractor who documents the condition on the day, with photographs, and prices the change before performing it, is managing the situation. A contractor who works through it quietly and raises it during billing is not.

Ask directly how field changes are handled and documented, and ask to see a redacted change record. The answer is usually revealing, because a contractor with a real process will describe it specifically and one without will speak in generalities.

Which claims can you actually verify?

Licensing should be verified through the issuing authority rather than accepted from a website. In Florida, the Department of Business and Professional Regulation (DBPR) offers a public online license search. Insurance should arrive as a certificate issued by the agent or carrier, not as a figure typed on a page.

References are more useful than published case studies, because a case study is self selected and professionally written while a reference can be asked your own questions. Ask specifically about documentation quality and about how a problem was handled, rather than whether the client was satisfied overall.

Equipment claims can be checked too. If a contractor says it owns the rig that will work your job, ask which rig and where it is working now. A yard visit or a site visit on another project settles the question in an afternoon.

How do you score contractors fairly?

Score every bidder against the same criteria, with the weights set before the bids are opened. Deciding the weights afterward invites the scoring to drift toward a favorite, and it makes the decision harder to defend to a review board or an unsuccessful bidder.

Ask every bidder the same questions in writing and record the answers in one comparison sheet. Score evidence, not presentation: a redacted closeout package scores higher than a promise of good documentation, and a written potholing plan scores higher than a statement about safety.

Close the loop with the bidders you did not choose. A short, factual debrief on where their submission scored lower keeps the process fair and tends to improve the next round of bids for everyone.

What belongs on a short evaluation checklist?

If you take one thing from this, take the closeout package request. It is a single question that surfaces most of what matters.

• What is self performed and what is subcontracted
• How locate marks are verified and where potholing is performed
• A sample bore log showing depth along the run
• A sample closeout package, redacted
• How field changes are documented and priced
• Licensing verifiable through the issuing authority
• Insurance certificate issued by the agent or carrier
• References who can speak to documentation and problem handling