Breaking in with large builders

What’s the key to successfully managing design/install jobs for national builders like Pulte? How does a company even land an account like this? Dane Milligan, president of SuperScapes in Wilmington, North Carolina, says like any other job, his company caught the eye of builder D.R. Horton because the contractor liked the work it saw from Milligan’s crews. 

“They had other landscapers working for them, but we were the ones they were calling to get the houses done,” he says, relating that deadlines on the contractor’s end required bringing in more forces to complete the work. “They were trying to meet their year-end goals.”

Milligan notes that using the right equipment gives SuperScapes an edge. He admits that he was a tractor boy, coming from a farming background. But the track-loaders beat out tractors and vastly improve efficiency. “As far as us getting new landscapes (including grading) done in 60 vs. 90 hours, it’s the equipment,” he says. 

But SuperScapes also makes pricing and planning easy for national builders. At first, the company would design each job. But Milligan realized that for materials ordering purposes, and for budgeting on the contractor’s end, a more structured program was necessary. 

“We started out doing mostly custom homes and as we evolved into more semi-custom with builders, they wanted to buy packages or ‘levels’ – package A, B or C, for example,” Milligan says, relating that a more assembly approach helped the company provide these contractors with solutions with an option to add on more features. “This helped us evolve into a more streamlined business.”