BLUE FROG CONSTRUCTION LLC

All went well. Mike is a project manager like none other and Vince is on top of the book keeping. Great guys. Although I believe Mike no longer is a project manager I'm sure anyone working under him will be as demanding as he is.

The decision to go with this company for the construction of our veterinary clinic was the WORST business decision we have ever made. This company provided absolute abysmal service. From the original cost estimate the company provided to the time frame the company originally promised, neither was close to our expectations. First, the original cost estimate provided by the company to build the facility was $850,000 before the plans were completed. At conclusion, after change orders, the final amount paid to the company was $1,044,737 or 23% more than the original cost estimate; there were no material changes to the scope of the work. In fact, several items were removed to bring the cost down including removing the parking lot resurfacing and other items. We had to seek other outside lending sources to pay for the equipment we had planned to purchase with the rest of our SBA loan since we had to pay them. Additionally, the company even admitted that it missed another $100,000 in costs during construction. They informed us they were not going to charge us for it since we were going to be a good referral. They even told us their revised gross profit %. Are we supposed to feel indebted to them? Why would they even think this way? We would have NEVER paid this additional money to them, but terminated the contract under Article 15 of "Owner's right to terminate the contract". We would have found another GC to complete the job. Imagine the arrogance of telling a client you are not going to charge them for something they did not even know about BEFORE you started the work. This makes the original amount of $850,000 look even worse. Even with the inaccuracies of the job costs, the most disappointing part of the engagement was the timeline. The contract called for the job to be substantially completed by evidence of a certificate of occupancy (CO) around "20 weeks" or "104 working days excluding weekends and holidays" from actual construction start date. We specifically hired this company to be operational by the summer of 2014 - the busiest part of the year for veterinarians. Construction started on the job site in mid-January of 2014; we received our certificate of occupancy on January 20, 2015 or a full year after construction started. Multiple completion dates were provided by the company including the original estimated date of 6/26/2014 and additional dates of 7/31/2014, 9/1/2014, 9/15/2014, 10/27/2014 and 11/30/2014. We did have some cold weather initially and rain later, but In the end, the company could have the built the clinic twice in the time it took for the construction. There were multiple reasons for delays - all primarily related to Blue Frog: 1 - Lack of Leadership - We had no reliable superintendent on site until the last couple weeks of the job. There was no one on site to push the job along. The job actually went a month (June) with hardly anyone on site and went weeks at a time during other months with no one there. In fact, superintendent #3 (who ceased being superintendent when he was jailed for something else) would tell us about other jobs he was being assigned to while he was our superintendent. Apparently, he would go to these other jobs rather than ours. We thought that with a $1 million construction job we would get a dependable full-time superintendent. 2 - The senior project manager following up with the superintendents was also unreliable. In fact, he seemed to care even less about the job than the superintendents. When no one followed up with him (after he did not follow up with the superintendents), the result was predictable - very little getting done. There just seemed to be no accountability. 3 - Subcontractors - Since the company was so far off on the cost estimate it had to settle for substandard subcontractors. These subs would show up for a few days and then disappear for weeks at a time. Combine this with no superintendent, and again, the result was predictable - very little getting done. 4 - Lack of Communication - The company would frequently request reimbursement for tasks not yet completed because there was seldom anyone site to tell them the status of the individual tasks. Again, the superintendent was not available to inform them what was completed. Even the job inspector hired by the company to monitor the job for our bank asked us: "where did you find these guys? There is seldom anyone here; when there is, it is usually someone different." There just seemed to be a lack of communication when this job needed it most. 5. Continuous poor hiring decisions made by the company - from subcontractors to its own personnel. See above. The company will now say that the individuals who were on our job are no longer with Blue Frog. As a result, everything will be great going forward. Perhaps, but also maybe naïve. Keep in mind, that the people who made the decisions to hire these people are STILL in charge of Blue Frog. At job completion, we received something predictable in the mail: one of the subcontractors who did work inside our facility filed a mechanics LIEN on the work in our name for payment. We received this lien notification on February 2015. We had previously received our CO (certificate of occupancy) earlier in January. Granted to be fair, the company still had over $100,000 left to request from the bank to disburse to its subcontractors; the company indicated to us that the costs in this lien were part of these remaining funds not yet disbursed. We believe they did intend to pay this subcontractor; however, receiving a lien in our name for our property is just one more thing for us to worry about. If the job had gone smoothly (or even semi-smoothly) we may not have received a lien notification. This lien notification also, at least, contributed to the delay of the final disbursement of the loan proceeds. We received final payment of the retainage from our loan from our bank on May 11, 2015. Again, our CO was January 2015. While this review is primarily for the service the company provided for the construction of our facility, Mike Rubio, one of the owners of the Blue Frog said all of the right things to get the work; however, at completion, we do NOT have any positive things to say about him. He will NEVER be welcome at our clinic.

I selected Blue Frog Construction after meeting the owners, Joey Wenum and Vince Mancuso, at a dental meeting. They seemed very professional, spoke well and were well-dressed. They had an impressive website with photos of renovations and complete build-outs. I called on 3 of the references they gave me and got decent reviews of the work done. What I experienced was much different, however, and since my renovation, I have heard NUMEROUS stories from other dentists and veterinarians of Blue Frog's inferior workmanship and lack of caring about the quality of the work done. One dentist even asked me to join him in a class action lawsuit. In hindsight, I should have followed my intuition when I could not get the owners to give me a definite price. A year before starting the project, I had told Blue Frog that my budget was around $60,000 and that I had allowed 12 days to do the work. I asked if my numbers were reasonable, and they stated that they could do the work I was describing in that amount of time and would come out to look at the scope to see about the price. After their on site visit, I was told that my project would be priced somewhere between $60,000 and 80,000. Several months later, just 5 weeks prior to the start date of construction, I pressed Joey Wenum for an actual contract as I had been asking for this for months and had yet to be given one. He handed me a quote of $120,000!!! I had already blocked my schedule off so that no patients were on our appointment book during those 12 days, and now found myself unsure of whether to continue. I decided to have Patterson Dental do my sterilization room instead of Blue Frog. That lowered the bill from Blue Frog by $10,000, and then I pressured Joey into lowering the quote by $5000 just because he was WAY over the agreed budget. In hindsight, I should have seen all this as a sign that I was dealing with a shady group of contractors, but I remained trusting as Joey Wenum is a smooth talker, a CON ARTIST really, who convinced me that their work was worth the price. Later more money was taken off my bill when they installed doors that were 2 inches too short (they had cut them incorrectly.) They argued that the gap was for "ventilation" and that this was standard (another contractor laughed when he saw them.) The hinges were so binding that if you pushed the door hard, it only budged a few inches. They did eventually remove the doors telling me I could get another company to do doors, which I did. Besides the doors, the countertops were wavy, and unlevel and the counter supports had MANY shims on top of them them as they had cut them too short. There were fingersized gaps in the trim that they caulked over, and there was a hole in the wall in the bathroom that I caught them wallpapering over. They forced their painter to paint while they swept the sheetrock dust off my concrete floor so they could hurry and place the carpet since they were running behind schedule. There was dust and trash all in the paint. I begged the painter to stop painting, but he had been instructed by the project supervisor (who was rarely on site) that he had to be finished by the end of the day. Blue Frog had stated that they would work double shifts to get my job done, but I came by many days at 4:00 in the afternoon to find no one working. Then on the last 2 days of construction, there were crews of every kind clamoring over each other to get the job done. When they finished, my foyer was left with a sink, light fixtures, old doors, and demolition scraps that were piled 6-7 feet high. My husband and I had to rent a U-Haul to carry off the garbage (we worked all night long) as I had patients arriving the next morning. The supervisor had left at 9pm saying he was too tired to stay and help!!! WARNING!!!! What you will find with Blue Frog is MANY excuses. They tell you they have their own crews but then subcontract out most of the work to the lowest bidders. If you call any of the major dental companies and ask their service departments if they recommend Blue Frog, they will tell you to look elsewhere. Please do not be taken by this company as I was.