General contracting, backed by engineers

Construction run by people who can read the drawings

Most general contracting problems are coordination problems wearing a hard hat. The drawings say one thing, the field finds another, and the gap between the two is where schedules and budgets go to die. Torch's general contracting work starts from an advantage most GCs don't have: the people running the build sit inside an engineering firm. When a conflict surfaces, the answer doesn't wait on an RFI chain — the team that can read the structural, MEP, and civil sets is already on the job.

Our contracting practice focuses on light commercial, tenant improvement, and light industrial work where the drawings are the job: build-outs with real MEP density, renovations inside operating facilities, and ground-up projects small enough to need one accountable team and technical enough to punish a careless one. We build what we would stamp — and what we build, we build to clear inspection the first time.

What we manage

• Pre-construction: estimating support, constructability review, and value engineering before the contract is signed
• Subcontractor selection, buyout, and coordination across structural, MEP, and civil scopes
• Permitting and inspection sequencing — submittals, plan check responses, and correction cycles run by people who engineer
• Schedule and budget control with weekly field reporting to the owner
• Change management: priced, documented, and approved before the work moves, never after
• Closeout: punch list, as-builts, O&M documentation, and certificate-of-occupancy support

What you receive

One accountable contract and one point of contact. You get a build team whose coordination drawings, submittal reviews, and field decisions come from the same house as the engineering — so when the engineer of record and the contractor need to agree on something, it's a conversation down the hall, not a dispute between firms. Owners get weekly reporting with photos, a live schedule, and a budget that shows committed costs against contract value, not a surprise at draw time. The set is not finished when it is drawn, and the job is not finished when it looks done — it is finished when it clears: inspections passed, punch closed, closeout documents in your hands.

Project types

Office and medical tenant improvements, retail build-outs, restaurant and food-service construction, light industrial and warehouse fit-outs, multifamily amenity and common-area renovations, and adaptive reuse of existing commercial buildings. Projects with heavy engineering content — structural modifications, rooftop equipment, service upgrades, change of occupancy — are where an engineer-led GC earns its fee, and they're the projects we take first.

Common questions

Do you self-perform, or sub everything out?

We manage the work and self-perform select scopes where our own crews are the right tool; specialty trades go to vetted subcontractors we buy out competitively. The value we sell is coordination and accountability — one contract, one throat to choke, and engineering judgment in the field — not a markup on labor we happened to have standing around.

Can you take over a project that's already permitted or mid-build?

Yes, and it's more common than owners expect. We start with a condition and document review — what was approved, what was built, what the inspectors have flagged — then price the completion honestly before anyone signs. Because we engineer in-house, correction cycles and as-built documentation on a taken-over job move faster than they do for a GC waiting on outside consultants.

What size projects do you take?

Light commercial and light industrial work, typically from focused tenant improvements up to ground-up projects in the low millions. If your project is bigger than our contracting practice, we'll tell you — and our engineering side can still support your GC with permit-ready drawings, best price, and PE stamps backed by Apex Grid Engineering.