15 Questions to Ask a Concrete Contractor Before You Sign

By the time you are sitting across from a concrete contractor, you have probably already done the hard part — asking around, checking reviews, narrowing the field. (If you are not there yet, start with our guide on how to choose a concrete contractor, which covers finding and screening candidates.) This article is the next step: the exact question script to run once you have real contractors giving you real bids.

Good contractors answer these questions easily, because they have already thought about them. Weak contractors get vague, defensive, or annoyed. That reaction is data. Here are the 15 questions, with what a good answer sounds like and why each one matters.

Credentials and accountability

1. Can you show me proof of license and insurance?

Ask for the license number and a certificate of insurance — both general liability and workers' compensation — with you named as certificate holder for the job. Do not accept "I'm fully insured" verbally; a legitimate contractor's insurance agent can email the certificate the same day. Why it matters: if an uninsured worker is injured on your property, or a loaded truck cracks your neighbor's sidewalk, you can end up personally liable.

2. Can you give me local references from the past year?

Recent and local both matter. A five-year-old reference tells you nothing about the current crew, and concrete performance is local — freeze-thaw climates punish shortcuts that mild climates forgive. Call at least two references and ask one question above all: "Did anything crack, and how did the contractor respond?" How a contractor handles the inevitable problem is worth more than a portfolio of sunny-day photos.

3. Who actually does the work — your crew or subcontractors?

Neither answer is disqualifying, but you need to know. If the work is subbed out, the references and workmanship you evaluated may belong to a different crew than the one showing up at your house. Ask who the foreman on your job will be, and whether the person quoting the job will be on site for the pour.

The technical spec — get it in writing

Questions 4 through 8 are where good and bad concrete jobs actually diverge. Every answer here should end up in the written contract. For a residential driveway, this is the quick reference:

Spec item	What to require
Concrete strength	3,500–4,500 PSI mix, stated in the contract
Slab thickness	5 inches for driveways (4 inches is the budget shortcut)
Reinforcement	Rebar or wire mesh — type and spacing specified
Base	Compacted gravel base, with depth stated
Control joints	Layout and depth planned before the pour
Curing	Named method: compound, wet cure, or blankets

4. What mix design and PSI will you pour?

For driveways and exterior flatwork, the standard answer is a 3,500–4,500 PSI mix, often with air entrainment in freeze-thaw climates. A contractor who cannot tell you the PSI — or who shrugs and says "standard mix" — is not ordering concrete deliberately. If the numbers are new to you, our concrete PSI ratings guide explains what the ratings mean and which projects need what.

5. How thick will the slab be, and what reinforcement goes in it?

Five inches is the quality standard for a driveway; four inches is where lowball bids quietly save money, and the difference is invisible once the concrete is down. Reinforcement — rebar on chairs or properly positioned wire mesh — controls how cracks behave when they happen. Get thickness and reinforcement in writing, and understand that this is a big part of why quality driveway work runs about $8–11 per square foot installed rather than the too-good-to-be-true number at the bottom of your bid stack.

6. How will you prepare the base?

Most concrete failures are actually base failures. You want to hear specifics: excavation depth, gravel type, compaction method (a plate compactor, not "the truck drives over it"), and what happens if the crew finds soft or wet soil. A contractor who talks fluently about sub-base has poured slabs that lasted; one who waves the question off has poured slabs that didn't.

7. What is your control-joint plan?

Concrete cracks — the whole game is deciding where. Control joints, cut or tooled at the right spacing and depth, give cracks a straight, tidy line to follow instead of wandering across your driveway. Ask how the joints will be laid out and when they will be cut; timing matters, because joints cut too late do nothing. A sketched joint plan is a good sign. "We'll saw it at some point tomorrow" is not.

8. How will you cure the slab?

Curing is the cheapest step that determines whether your slab ever reaches its rated strength, and it is the step careless crews skip because the concrete "looks done." Acceptable answers: curing compound sprayed the day of the pour, wet curing, or curing blankets in cold weather. "It'll be fine" is not a curing method.

Logistics, money, and paper

9. What is your weather plan?

Rain during a pour, a hard freeze that night, or a 95-degree afternoon can each ruin fresh concrete. Ask what conditions cause a postponement and who makes that call. A contractor who has walked away from a scheduled pour over weather is a contractor who cares about the result more than the schedule. Our walkthrough of the concrete driveway installation process shows where weather risk actually falls in the sequence.

10. What is the timeline, and what is the payment schedule?

Two answers to pin down. Timeline: start date, pour date, and when you can walk and drive on the new slab (walking within a day or two, driving typically about a week). Payment: never pay a large upfront deposit — 10–30% is the acceptable maximum, with the balance tied to milestones or completion. A contractor demanding half or more before work starts is either financing the last job with your money or planning a short relationship with you. Hold the final payment until the work is complete and cleaned up.

11. What does your warranty cover, in writing?

Verbal warranties are worth the paper they are printed on. Ask what is covered — structural cracking, settling, surface scaling — for how long, and what is explicitly excluded. Hairline cracking is normal and usually excluded; a slab that settles or breaks apart within a year is not. The revealing follow-up: "When was the last time you honored this warranty, and what did you do?"

12. Is demolition, haul-away, and cleanup included?

Tearing out an old driveway runs roughly $2 per square foot, and disposal of broken concrete is not free. Make sure the bid states that removal, haul-away, washout disposal, and final grading of disturbed areas are included — or what each costs if not. Concrete washout dumped in your yard or down a storm drain is a bad surprise and, in many places, a violation.

13. Who pulls the permit?

If the project needs one — new driveways and anything structural usually do — the contractor should pull it under their own license, with the fee shown in the bid. A contractor who asks you to pull the permit as an owner-builder is waving a red flag: it usually means they cannot pull it themselves, and it shifts responsibility for code compliance onto you.

14. Will you provide lien waivers?

If your contractor does not pay the concrete supplier or a subcontractor, those parties can put a mechanic's lien on your house — even though you paid the contractor in full. A lien waiver, signed at final payment (and ideally with each progress payment), cuts off that risk. Professionals handle this routinely; if the request confuses your contractor, that tells you something.

15. Can I have an itemized written quote?

One number scrawled on a business card is not a quote. You want line items: demo and removal, base prep, thickness, PSI, reinforcement, finish, joints, curing, permit, cleanup, and payment terms. Itemized quotes make bids comparable and make "that wasn't included" arguments impossible later. Our guide to how to read a concrete quote breaks down each line and the tricks to watch for, and you can sanity-check any total against our concrete cost calculator — for reference, a 20×20 two-car driveway done right typically lands around $3,150–$4,550.

How to use this list

Do not run it as an interrogation. Work the questions into the site walkthrough and the bid review, and pay as much attention to how contractors answer as to what they say. The pattern you are looking for: specific numbers, written commitments, and no irritation at being asked. One vague answer is a follow-up question; three vague answers is a different contractor.

Get matched with contractors worth interviewing

The questions only work if you have solid candidates to ask them. Tell us about your project and we'll get free quotes from local contractors — vetted local pros who expect these questions and answer them in writing.