Homeowners have a hard time telling good contractors from good marketers. Reviews help, but stars are easy to collect and hard to check. Paid directories tell you who bought an ad. Neither one tells you whether the flashing was done right or whether the crew left the yard clean.
That is why we started the Built Right Awards. It is a simple idea: recognize contractors for individual jobs done well, and judge those jobs on evidence.
How the award works
Contractors enter one finished project at a time, in one category. Each entry includes before, during, and after photos, a short description of the challenge and how the crew solved it, and the homeowner’s contact details.
- Screening. We check that the entry is complete and that the contractor is licensed (where required) and insured.
- Homeowner verification. We contact the homeowner with a short survey before anything is scored.
- Trade judging. At least two judges with experience in that trade score the work against a published 100-point rubric, without seeing the company name.
- Results. Entries that score 80 or more earn the Award of Excellence. Every entrant gets their scores back.
Six launch categories
We are starting with the trades homeowners hire most for big exterior and interior projects: roofing, gutters, siding, windows and doors, kitchen remodeling, and bathroom remodeling. More categories will follow.
Why judge one job at a time?
A company-wide rating can hide a lot. A single job, with photos of the work that gets covered up and a homeowner who will vouch for it, is much harder to fake. It also gives homeowners something concrete to look at: the actual roof, the actual kitchen, and what the judges said about it.
What winners get
Winners receive a badge for their website, trucks, and yard signs, a public project page, and a marketing kit. Every badge carries an ID that anyone can check on our Verify page, so the award cannot be copied by someone who did not earn it.
Our full scoring rubric and review steps are on the How It Works page, and the rules every entry follows are in our Judging Rules. If you have a job you are proud of, you can enter it here.