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I am by no means an IH expert, but am lead to believe that unless you found another manufacturer's tractor re-powered with one, which would be a custom "one of" situation, tgo my knowledege, IH would be the only one that would have a DT 466 in it and this is the first I've heard of that engine used in that application, which may demonstrate how little I do know regarding IH's/dresser etc. A skid steer is no doubt a versatile machine, but beyond speading loose material, and all the other tasks you can do with them, there is no doubt in my mind that attempting major cuts and fills on a site job of the scale you have described, would be a waste of time and could render that machine useless through hard abusive work. Spreading top soil and light shaping on the flats is not asking too much, but beyond that, it really calls for a crawler in my humble opinion. The results you achieve with a crawler loader on slopes could be maraginal if you are not an articulate and experienced operator, it puts you in the same category of dozers with straight blades, that have no tilt and or angle for cutting and shaping, you have to strategically plan how you will increase the tilt by using fill to raise one side of the crawler higher to get the opposing edge to dig in further, making your cuts more difficult to achieve, it can be done, but you spend some time on a late model dozer rental unit, you will park the crawler loader for this kind off work once you see the difference. If you have gentle slopes existing and you need to do minimal cutting, shaping, or clearing/grubbing, the crawler loader could do it, but if you have intricate, compound shapes in mind, might want to get the right machine for the job,like a D4G, or similar sized machine with a 6 way blade. I have a lot of experience in the construction industry, my roots started in site development, and my instinct tells me, that if you hire a contractor under the pretenses you describe, it may not be the most equitable thing to do. When contemplating doing this kind of work, the main reason for investing in equipment and or renting is to buy this work a lot less than a contractor would price it or charge you at, basically you are doing it around cost, compared to the contractor, who must pay his operator, include depreciation of his equipment, 10% profit 10% overhead, + any other costs he may toss into his lump sum for specified work. You would be wise to identify the precise scope of work you want done, and include all particulars for the work, start finish durations for each work item, overall completion date, provisions for inclement weather delays, percentage of completion payment schedule ( pay for what is done in a given period of time, that you accept as complete - 10% retainage until the end of the job ). All of which needs to be contained in a contract to be signed by both parties. A contractor would really want the entire job, you may be able to negotiate what you need, say like your dam. To properaly construct an earthen dam, you must undercut the footprint of the dam and re-compact the fill to 100% compaction below the bottom of the dam and subsequently compact each lift of 12" of fill to the top or finish grade of the dam, so that it is impervious. You need a heavy vibratory roller to do this,and the right kind of fill if the existing fill does not work, not something you may want to outsource. Even renting these can be a pain, so you do the earth work and hire out a contractors vibratory roller, just for the compaction work, it still has to be coordinated, the contractor is going to want to have continuity on the job, meaning no sporadic breaks in performing the work, delaying; the completion of the work, payment for completion and de-mobilizing from the job, which ties up the machine that may need to go to another job. I would think to arrive at a mutually acceptable agreement with a contractor it could get complicated on a larger job, your costs will be higher as mentioned above, risk of ending up in litagation is always possible, it's a situation you may want to negotiate unit prices for and do specific tasks on time and material basis,( T&M ) a contractor may only agree to T&M scenarios to play it safe, at agreed unit prices. Doing it over time as you describe, certainly helps you do what you can afford when you can afford it, keeping you out of debt for the site improvements you would like done, do it all at once and it does not take long to incur large expenses to do earthwork. Hope this is of some help.
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