Independent advice for owners: pre-construction review, bid leveling, permit pointers and HERS energy testing. A licensed Florida general contractor (CGC1528750) and certified energy rater on your side of the table. Advisory only.
If you are searching for a construction consultant in Palm Beach County, you are usually at one of three moments: about to collect bids, about to sign a contract, or about to buy or retrofit a building and wondering what is really wrong with it. A consultant works for you, answers one question well, and does not profit from the answer. Randolph Scott Bell is a Florida certified general contractor (CGC1528750), a RESNET HERS Rater (RTIN 4516301), a LEED Accredited Professional, and holds a B.S. in Engineering and an MBA. He has spent 17 years building businesses in Palm Beach County, and he was born and raised in West Palm Beach.
This page is the local front door. It covers short, defined advisory work: reviewing a scope before it goes out to bid, leveling bids, reading a contract for what it leaves out, pointing you to the right permit and licensing questions, and measuring a building's energy performance. For oversight of a project that is already under construction, see the owner's representative service. For the full range of speaking and advisory work, return to Speaking & Consulting.
Consulting here is advice, not a sales channel for construction. The recommendation in a bid review is the same whether or not the owner ever hires the consultant for a job. If you later decide you want a builder, that is a separate conversation and a separate agreement, and you are never obligated to take it. That separation is the entire value of an independent opinion.
It also means this page will not promise outcomes it cannot control. A consultant can show you that one bid omits the demolition, that another carries a thin allowance, or that a payment schedule runs ahead of the work. The decision stays with you.
The two roles answer different questions, and hiring the wrong one wastes money. Use this as a rule of thumb:
A few public-record facts help any owner in the county orient themselves. Contractor licences in Florida are issued by the state through the Department of Business and Professional Regulation (DBPR), and anyone can check one on the DBPR online lookup. A certified licence such as CGC1528750 is valid statewide, while a registered one is tied to local registration. Permits for work in unincorporated Palm Beach County go through the county's Planning, Zoning and Building department; incorporated municipalities run their own building offices, so the right counter depends on your address.
On wind, the High-Velocity Hurricane Zone in the Florida Building Code applies to Miami-Dade and Broward counties, not Palm Beach County. Palm Beach County still has wind-load and product-approval requirements for roofs, windows and doors, and the building official for your property is the authority on what applies. Nothing on this page is legal or code advice; it is a starting list of the right questions.
Energy performance is where a licensed contractor who is also a certified energy engineer is unusual. Randolph Scott Bell is a RESNET certified HERS Rater (RTIN 4516301) and carried out 350+ certified energy ratings in St. Lucie County. A HERS rating scores a building's efficiency after an inspection and testing; the blower-door test measures how much air leaks through the envelope. Read more on HERS energy rating and blower-door testing.
The practical use is simple. Before you spend on insulation, windows or a new air-conditioning system, a measurement tells you whether the building's real problem is air leakage, ductwork, glazing or something else.
The same advisory approach reaches larger energy projects. Randolph's earlier career was in Denmark, in waste-to-energy and biomass boiler plants, heat-pump and ventilation product development, and insulation equipment, after a B.Sc. in Engineering at Aalborg University. For owners weighing a plant, the offer is feasibility review, owner's-representative support and EPC advisory, not construction. See biomass power plant consulting and waste-to-energy consulting.
Call (561) 779-3213 and describe where the project stands. You will get an honest answer on whether a consultant is what you need, and what a scoped engagement would look like. There is no published price list because a one-evening bid comparison and a multi-month review are different jobs; the quote is scoped to your project.
Tell me what you have in hand. I will say plainly whether you need a consultant, a contractor, or neither.
A construction consultant works for the owner, not the contractor. Typical work is reviewing the drawings and scope before bidding, leveling competing bids so they can be compared line by line, checking a contract for missing exclusions, pointing the owner to the right permit and licensing questions, and, where energy performance matters, testing the finished building. This practice is advisory only: no construction is sold or performed as part of a consulting engagement.
Hire a consultant when the question is whether the plan, price or paperwork is right, before you commit. Hire a contractor when the scope is settled and you need it built. If you are comparing three bids that do not look alike, unsure whether a scope is complete, or being asked to sign a contract you cannot fully read, that is consultant territory. If you already know exactly what you want built and have a clear scope, you may only need a contractor.
The owner's representative page covers full-lifecycle oversight of a project that is underway: change orders, draws, schedule and closeout. This page is the local entry point: a short, defined review at the start, or a single question answered, for homeowners, associations and small commercial owners in Palm Beach County. Many engagements begin here and some grow into owner's representative work. Details are on the owner's representative page.
Yes. Bid leveling puts each proposal on the same footing: what is included, what is excluded, which allowances are realistic, what permit and inspection responsibilities are assigned, and how payments are scheduled against progress. The goal is to show you what the lowest number left out, so the comparison is real. Call (561) 779-3213 and describe the bids you have.
Yes, as pointers, not as legal advice. Randolph Scott Bell holds Florida certified general contractor license CGC1528750 and can tell you which questions to put to the Palm Beach County permitting office, what a permit should describe, and how to check a contractor's license on the Florida DBPR lookup. You, or your contractor of record, still pull the permit. Rules change, so confirm requirements with the permitting office for your property.
A HERS rating is a standardized score of a home's energy efficiency, produced by a certified rater after inspecting the building and testing it. Randolph Scott Bell is a RESNET certified HERS Rater (RTIN 4516301) and previously performed 350+ certified energy ratings in St. Lucie County. See the HERS energy rating page for what an engagement involves.
A blower-door test pressurizes or depressurizes a building to measure how leaky its envelope is. It is part of a HERS rating and is useful on its own to find air leakage in an existing home before a renovation or insulation decision. A separate blower-door testing page explains the process and what the numbers mean.
No. In Florida the High-Velocity Hurricane Zone is Miami-Dade and Broward counties. Palm Beach County is outside it, but still sits in a wind-borne debris region for much of its area, so wind-load and product-approval questions apply to roofs, windows and doors. Your permitting office and design professional confirm what applies to a specific address.
Yes. If a short phone call shows you only need a contractor, or that your existing contractor's paperwork is sound, that is what you will hear. The point of independent advice is that it does not depend on selling you more work.
It depends on the question. A single bid comparison and a multi-month review are different engagements, so there is no published price list. Call (561) 779-3213 for a conversation and a quote scoped to your project.
Yes, as advisory work only: feasibility, owner's-representative support and EPC review, drawing on a Danish energy-engineering career in waste-to-energy and biomass boiler plants. Consulting does not mean building or operating a plant. See the biomass power plant and waste-to-energy pages for scope.