Bid examples

What gets settled before the number goes in

Four trade packages we bid, and the scope question in each that had to be answered before the price meant anything. Client, general contractor and bid set details are held in confidence.

Off-price retail, store remodel

Sector
National off-price retail chain
Region
Bronx, NY
Trade package
Interior painting, labor
Scope basis
Room finish schedule, dimensional plan, ceiling notes and door schedule, as revised by pre-bid addendum
Door and frame count
17 doors and frames

The scope question

The bid drawings showed a wall panel line at 4'-0" AFF. A pre-bid addendum moved it to 6'-0" throughout, including the locker room and office hall. Paint only starts above that line, so two feet of wall came out of the package across the whole sales floor perimeter, the column enclosures and the entry vestibule. A bidder working from the original sheets prices wall that the panel now covers.

Two more items went out in writing rather than being carried silently. The pre-bid minutes called for dry fall at the open ceiling over the processing room without naming the product, so the bid stated the rate carried and flagged it to be trued up against the architect’s specification. The new painted exit-path stripe had no dimensions yet, so it was carried as a stated allowance rather than a guess buried in the lump sum.

Scope carried: back-of-house walls, sales floor perimeter band above the panel line, column enclosures, entry vestibule, gypsum board ceilings in semi-gloss, dry fall on exposed structure at processing, a 6" perimeter decor stripe, and the door and frame schedule. Lay-in acoustic ceilings, wall protection systems and factory-finished doors were excluded by name.

Retail medical clinic, specialty finish

Sector
Retail medical, tenant fit-out
Region
Manhattan, NY
Trade package
Substrate preparation for specialty finish
Coated surface
2,689 SF wall, 427 SF ceiling
Finish schedule
Three Venetian plaster finishes
Prep standard
Skim coat and latex primer, contractor-supplied

The scope question

Specialty plaster is only as good as what it goes over. The applicator’s quote put skim coat and latex primer on the contractor, not on their own scope. That is a substantial area of Level 5-equivalent preparation sitting in a gap between two trades, and it is exactly the kind of line that gets missed when a package is priced off a finish schedule alone.

The prep was scoped, measured against the finish schedule area by area, and carried explicitly rather than assumed into the plaster line.

Medical diagnostics, patient service centre

Sector
Medical fit-out, existing tenant space
Region
NY metro
Trade package
Painting and drywall
Room count
13 rooms, including patient encounter, waiting, specimen consolidation, break room, restrooms and mechanical
Prep standard
Existing walls reviewed, repaired and replaced as required to receive a new Level 3 drywall finish
Wall protection
Corner guards at the main corridor and the accessible patient encounter room

The scope question

The floor plan called out corner guards and a Level 3 finish over existing walls, and referred the finish schedule to two different sheets in two different notes. Neither sheet was in the set issued for bid. Without a finish schedule there is no documented ceiling height, paint product or wall protection height anywhere in the package.

That is a request for information before it is a price. The missing sheets were identified by number and requested, rather than filling the gap with an assumption and discovering the difference after award.

National retail rollout, multi-store programme

Sector
National retail rollout
Region
Multiple locations
Trade package
Painting
Delivery model
Repeat store prototype across multiple locations

The scope question

Rollout work rewards a bidder who treats the prototype as a starting point rather than a finished answer. Store conditions differ: existing substrate, ceiling height, and how much of the previous fit-out survives demolition. Quantities are re-derived per store against that store’s drawings, and anything carried across from a prior location is stated as an assumption instead of presented as a measurement.


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