by: Lee Summers, Electrical Project Manager, C Mechanical Services
The alarm rings; it’s 5 am. Time to get ready for work. It’s bid day.
You scuttle into the office early today. There’s so much to do. The bid is due by 2 pm today. You pull up your email and find a dozen or more quotes from different vendors—time to start verifying. You mill over the numbers, cataloging each as you confirm scope and quantities. You notice a discrepancy on one of them. You hurriedly reach out and try to correct it before the bid goes in. It’s 12:30 pm. You realize you’re still missing several vendor quotes. You start to sweat. So much work to do in an hour and a half. But you’ve been here before and know you’ll get it done just under the wire.
This dialog sounds familiar to many of you who serve in an estimating role for your company. Being a construction estimator is among the most challenging and mentally taxing jobs. There are many moving parts and components to review, and ensuring accuracy is paramount. There are many considerations about how much risk you will take to win a project. It can be one of the most stressful positions, yet one of the most rewarding when you get that call that you were the low bidder. Let’s review the process from Request for Proposal to submitting your bid.
- Request for Proposal: These typically come to your inbox from various trade partners and can run the range from 100% bid spec documents to requests for design-build budgets based on 30% drawings and very little information. Trade partners rely on each other throughout project development to establish and maintain project budgets and to help find ways to be as competitive as possible. Specialty companies can offer value add and cost-saving services, including prefabrication and in-house value engineering. These components can be critical to help win jobs.
- RFI’s: When information on the bid documents is unclear or unspecified, RFI’s are sent. These “Requests for Information” can range in complexity from something as small as a missing dimension to misaligned components on the drawings. Sometimes products aren’t specified. Sometimes architects and engineers use old or outdated specifications, and products are no longer available. It is critical for the estimating team to carefully review the documents and specifications early in the bid process so there is time for RFI’s to be sent and answered before bid day.
- Addendums: When the design team finds that modifications are necessary, either internally or through the RFI process, they will issue an addendum to the bid. These addendum’s can be minor changes, or they can completely replace entire sheets of drawings. Managing the RFI’s and addendum’s is a critical component of bid accuracy so that you know your bid is based on the latest and greatest information and is competitive with others.
- Alternates: Customers often want more than they can afford, so alternates are a way for customers to review a menu of options and see what fits into their overall project intent and budget. By providing “a la carte” options to the job, it can help the customer prioritize their desires and offers an opportunity for additional work potentially as the project progresses.
- Bid Date: Ultimately every estimate has a due date. Sometimes this due date is established when the initial RFP is sent. Occasionally this date is extended to accommodate the responses to the RFI’s and addendums. The challenge with a hard bid date is that almost all vendors know there will be changes along the way, so they like to wait until very close to bid time to submit their pricing. This limits how much they need to reissue modifications and ultimately helps them to be more efficient. But it makes it challenging for estimators when we have so much information to review for accuracy before selecting a vendor to include in our bid.
You submit your bid just in time. Now you wait. Sometimes hours. Sometimes days. Sometimes weeks, depending on the complexity of the job and the number of contractors you’re competing against. In the meantime, more RFPs come out, and you’re unsure how many you should bid. You ask your trade partners for updates. They have none. Your latest bid request is due in 3 days to start the process again.
Being a construction estimator is a constant dance of maintaining good relations with trade partners, vendors, and customers. Ensuring your bid is accurate will limit the number of change orders to the project and ultimately helps the project team feel more confident and comfortable using your bid when they submit it to the project owners. It’s truly a difficult task to ensure jobs are profitable while being competitive, but that’s the name of the game. If you’re in the market for a career change, estimating might be the high-stakes position you’re looking for.
Posted May 9, 2023
