How to Prepare Your Parking Lot for Striping Service

You’ve gathered all the bids, asked the right questions and have narrowed your choice to one contractor. Now, what can you expect? The following steps will help make your Parking Lot Striping Project go smoother.

Schedule

If you have a particular timeline you have to meet, hopefully, you shed that with the contractor you’ve chosen. High-quality providers are often backed up on their work. It may well be worth the wait for the right contractor, but make sure they can meet your true deadlines.

Weather can wreak havoc in the painting world. Be patient if weather is challenging.

Clearing the Lot

Properties like apartment complexes must plan well ahead to warn residents of pavement marking services. The earlier the better and plan to warn them repeatedly as you get closer to the service date. You might even have a tow truck service on call if need be.

Businesses should alert their employees and, when appropriate, their customers as well. Most stripers will work around your open hours of business. Make sure you discuss timing.

Lights On!

If you happen to have lighting available, make sure it’s on for your contractor. Even though can work with lights on their equipment, every extra bit of lighting helps tremendously!

Water Off!

If you’ve got an irrigation system on the property, please make sure it is off during the planned service window. Nothing more frustrating than putting down fresh paint only to have the sprinklers turn on at 0300 and wash away some of the lines. It gets messy and complicated when this happens.

Cleaning the Lot

Unless specifically mentioned in the bid, new layout and re-stripe projects DO NOT include any sort of heavy cleaning. A wire broom here or there and a backpack blower are about all you should expect from a standard bid proposal. If you are having landscape and/or construction work being performed, you must ensure the lot is mostly clean prior to your contractor’s arrival (again, unless other arrangements have been made). Pressure washing prior to re-striping is common in some parts of the country and very rare in other (most) parts of the country. Know what’s expected!

A Word to Our GC Friends

Please. Pretty please, don’t tell you striping contractor the site is ready when it isn’t. We know you are trying to accomplish multiple tasks at once and you often want to see those lines on the ground to get your Certificate of Occupancy, but many GCs are creating extra work (costs) for themselves and their sub-contractors by jumping the gun.

If we had one things we wish we could change was to be in a position to never have to turn around because the site was promised to be ready when it isn’t. Your contract will likely have a penalty clause in these situations as circumstances like this bring the striping operation to a halt and it’s not like they can just move on to the next project last minute. Stripers are pretty much dead in the water when the site isn’t ready. Please be considerate of your fellow contractors.

Be Reachable

Sometimes bad things happen or the striping contractor will discover an error on the blueprints. They need to be able to reach a decision-maker at any time they are on site. Please be accessible.

After Service

You may have some cones or caution tape still in place from work performed the night before. Coordinate with the contractor to tear down the warning materials as needed.

Most traffic paints are fast drying. Acetone can dry within moments while latex might take hours. Know which type of paint is being used and approximate drying time for planning purposes. Low temps or high humidity or moisture will greatly affect drying times. I will cover various paint types and drying times in a later post.

Errors?

If you discover an error was made, take a picture and send via text or email to your point of contact with a description of the error. If you’ve hired a crew that is traveling a great distance, it might take a while to fix the error and the contractor may have to hire a local sub-contractor for touch up work. Unless it’s a critical error, please try to be patient. Withholding final payment does tend to get the problem fixed.

Payment

Cash flow is a major problem in the parking lot striping industry with 30 day terms as a common window (that often gets stretched to 45 days or more). Some projects will demand 45 day terms from the contractor and others even longer. Please pay on time or early. You will make their day! You might even negotiate a discount for early payment. More on negotiations in a later blog.

Salute!