Most of the time people who need an asphalt paving contractor don't need one for a personal project at their home.
Usually contractors who lay asphalt are doing the work for a city, a county or a state.
Usually the work is part of a large repaving project on a major road or highway.
While there are needs for asphalt that don't require repaving an entire road, those jobs are far and few between.
When it comes time for a municipality or government agency to choose an asphalt paving company there are some pretty straightforward rules that they follow to make it all come together.
Usually the first step in the process is to send out a Request for proposal or and RFP.
Usually this is sent out to several companies that the government organization is familiar with.
Most of the time once a company receives the RFP they will get started evaluating it right away.
This means that they will look at what the requirements will be of the company who is awarded the job.
Not all companies will respond to the RFP because it may be beyond their scope of services or it might be that they are too busy to take on another project.
Usually though if a company doesn't respond it's because they are just not in a place to handle the specific requirements that the RFP is calling for.
Of the companies that do decide to move forward and respond to the RFP, they will often be extremely diligent in their response.
Most RFP's have a firm deadline attached to them.
Usually the deadline is a month from the time that the request is sent out.
Most companies who are responding find that they will use the time right up until the deadline in order to get their information together and complete the RFP to the best of their ability.
Completing an RFP can be labor intensive and therefore can be expensive to the companies that are responding to it.
Knowing that, companies that do respond to RFP's want to make sure that they have the best shot they can possibly give themselves in order to try and get the job that the RFP is representing.
At the end of the day though, it's sort of like a blind bidding process.
The entity that puts the RFP out will have certain things they are looking for and things that will be more important to them than other criteria.
The entity may only be concerned about the cost, but it might also be that they are really interested in the experience level of the various contractors.
It can be very difficult to know what the entity is looking for.