I'm not a person to write a review ever, but in this case i felt like i have to. I'm working for a construction manager in the city, and we usually work with the same subcontractor companies again and again, a lot of union as well. However, during the last months when the times are hard in construction and everybody is looking to cut the costs, we started to do more research on non union, non city companies that can do the job equally good. C&A was pretty much like what we were hoping for. The thing is that usually the pattern goes like this: you sign a contract with a steel company given an X price for the items you asked for, later on the picture starts to change, more hidden costs come out , steel price goes up or down, projects need more steel and so on... in the end whatever you see on the contract is far away from what you pay in the end... everybody is used to it, and thats it. especially when you mostly work in the city-prices automatically jump up, union workers are not the greatest find either in terms of the work discipline and quality they give vs what money they get.
In short, at some point everyt project became a nightmare, as due to financing difficulties everything got frozen. We were looking through multiple options of refinancing and cutting and so on, till the point that one of the clients recommended C&A, and it was a great gift. First of all they are not union! and as sad as it is they perform much better. Second they are professionals in their field. The company is open since 60s. Family business. A lot of accumulated knowledge and reputation. They actually met with our engineers and helped to reduce the steel quantities on the project in the most efficient and natural way- this by itself was a great cost saving deal! They are not the cheapest in Brooklyn, but compared to the city prices they are great. Besides they do help u with engineering and take the subcontractor steel business to a totally different level. No hidden costs, everything on the table, straight forward, which makes everything so much easier to manage. We are signing the third job with them and we are very content. By the way, we also met with a few other steel comp. in Brooklyn whose price range was almost dirty cheap, but we never got the reliability feeling like we did from these guys.Everything was kinda shady. And Reliability and trust today values the most. They are also expanding right now, which alone at this times is a good sign.
Pros: very reliable, quality service, quality work
Cons: not union
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