Bid Leveling: Compare Sub Quotes That Do Not Cover the Same Scope

Bid leveling puts every subcontractor quote on the same scope, so you compare like with like. You do it after the quotes arrive and before you carry any of them into your bid. Below, one example shows the cheapest quote ending last. It also shows how to price the work a bidder left out and lists the columns a leveling sheet needs. The step sits inside a wider routine, covered in how to bid construction jobs. The tables are built to copy into your own spreadsheet.

What bid leveling is and when you need it

Bid leveling is the step where you compare sub and supplier quotes on the same scope, the same addenda and the same terms. The quotes stay as the subs wrote them. Your sheet sits beside them and shows what each quote would cost if it covered the whole package.

You need it whenever two or more quotes arrive for one trade. A single quote still needs checking against the documents. Some teams hand the sheet to an outside bid desk. The method is the same either way.

Scope gaps come in two kinds. Some quotes price a task that others leave out, and that changes the ranking. Sometimes every quote leaves the same task out, such as work that sits between two trades, and that gap lands in your own estimate. Leveling cannot turn a vague quote into a firm one, and the sheet alone cannot prove a price is right. Reading the spread, covered below, is how you spot a price that looks wrong.

Bid leveling in one worked example: the low quote flips

The package is electrical work on a small office building, quoted by three subs. This job is made up, and every dollar figure in it is illustrative: round placeholders picked to keep the sums simple, not market prices, wage rates or quotes. Your own jobs will price differently. Table 1 marks each scope row In, Out or By others, and an Out row carries the plug that prices it.

Table 1. Illustrative figures. Quote A is low as submitted and highest once the plugs go in.

Quote A sits $8,000 under the next quote as submitted. It leaves out three things the documents require: the fire alarm interface, temporary power and permit fees. Quote B includes those but leaves out the trench for the site feeder. Quote C leaves out nothing that A or B include. With the plugs added, A rises to $115,000 and B to $111,000, and C stays at $112,000. The order flips from A, B, C to B, C, A.

Firestopping is a different case. All three quotes mark it by others, so no plug changes the order. The gap is still real. Carry it once in your own estimate or in another package, or nobody has priced it.

The example is simplified. Every rate is a placeholder and stands for an all-in price, so tax and markup do not appear on their own lines. A real sheet shows both, and this one leaves out alternates, bond and schedule.

Write the scope checklist before the quotes arrive

Build the rows before you read a single price. If you build them afterward, the first quote you read shapes the list and its gaps drop out of view. Draw the rows from every spec section for the trade. A CSI-format specification section has three parts: General, which holds administrative and procedural requirements, then Products, then Execution. Scope hides in all three. Add the Division 01 sections that apply to every trade, the drawing notes and every addendum.

Send the rows with the invitation, as part of a scoped package for your subs. A sub who answers your rows hands you a quote that drops straight into the sheet. A sub who sends a letter hands you a reading job. This checklist covers rows that apply to many trades:

• Spec sections for the trade, Parts 1, 2 and 3

• Temporary facilities, permits and fees, cleaning, closeout documents

• Testing, startup and commissioning, and the warranty term required

• Delivery, hoisting and storage

• Edge items shared with neighboring trades, such as sleeves, patching and firestopping

• Alternates, unit prices and allowances, each on its own row

How to level bids: put every quote on the same basis

To compare subcontractor bids fairly, check scope first and terms second. Put these terms on one basis before you add a total:

• Addenda. Record the last addendum each sub priced. A quote that predates an addendum that moved scope is stale until the sub confirms it.

• Alternates, unit prices and allowances. Keep alternates and unit prices out of the base total, so base compares with base. Carry allowances in the base at the amount the documents set, unless the instructions to bidders say otherwise.

• Products. Confirm each quote prices the specified product, or a substitution the documents allow.

• Price basis and validity. Note whether the quote is supply only or supply and install, and whether tax, freight, bond and insurance are in. Write down the date each price lapses, and get an extension in writing if it lapses before award.

• Qualifications. Keep assumptions such as "owner furnishes the equipment" apart from exclusions. Each may need a price or a talk.

Then work the sheet in order:

1. Log each quote when it arrives, with the time and the addenda it names, so the sheet is half built before the last quotes land.

2. Mark every scope row In, Out, Unclear, By others or Not required.

3. Treat Unclear as Out until a written answer says otherwise.

4. Ask the sub in writing about the row, not the price: "Does your price include temporary power as Division 01 describes it?"

5. Plug what stays open, then add the plugs and compare the totals.

If you write quotes yourself, a proposal that levels cleanly names its addenda, inclusions and exclusions so nobody has to guess.

Plug numbers: pricing the scope a bidder left out

A plug is a stand-in price that you add to a quote for scope it leaves out. It is your estimate, not the sub's price, and it stays on your internal sheet. The same labeling and replacement rules apply to a placeholder for a trade with no quote, though the build then covers the whole trade.

Price each plug from your own quantity. Take the quantity from your takeoff, the drawings or the schedule, and multiply it by a rate from outside the bidder. The plug then moves when the job moves, and you can defend it line by line. Setting the scope boundary before measuring shows where each trade's work starts and stops. For the rates, see labor and unit rate sources. Table 2 builds the four plugs from Table 1, with illustrative quantities and rates. In your own sheet the rates come from your cost history or a supplier price.

Table 2. Each plug is a quantity times an illustrative rate.

Seven rules keep plugs honest:

1. Take the rate from outside the bidder: your cost history, a supplier price, another bidder's breakout for the same row, or a published fee schedule.

2. Show the quantity times the rate in the cell, with the source and the date.

3. Label every plug and give it its own row. Never fold it into the sub's number.

4. Never carry zero for required work, because zero says the work is free. If the documents do not require it, mark the row Not required and carry nothing.

5. Price the plug on the same basis as the quotes it sits beside. If the other quotes carry markup on that kind of work, carry it in the plug. A fee passed through at cost carries none.

6. Replace the plug with the sub's written price when it arrives, and keep the old line with its date.

7. Keep plugs inside your office. Ask a sub about scope, and never quote a plug or another sub's number to a sub.

Leveling turns quotes in mixed formats into one comparable page, and it is the step that gets squeezed when two bids land the same afternoon. An outside desk can build the sheet while you decide the number. Takeoff Services LLC sells that bid desk service, and the sheet and rules above work with or without it. With that service, the first leveling pass is delivered 24 to 96 hours from an approved quote, so send the quotes as they arrive, not on bid morning.

Bid leveling template: the columns that matter

Lay the sheet out with scope rows down the left side and one block of columns for each bidder. Table 3 lists the columns and what goes in them. Copy it into a spreadsheet and repeat the bidder block for each quote.

Table 3. The columns of a leveling sheet.

Marker, Plug and Open question belong to each scope row for each bidder. Raw price, Leveled total and the columns from Addenda priced through Schedule and lead time sit once per bidder, as in Table 1, so do not enter a lump-sum price on every row. The decision note sits once per trade.

If you would rather see a finished sheet first, you can request a leveling sheet from the sample library. The form asks for your name, company, work email and phone number, and the file arrives by email. A spreadsheet like this fits a handful of quotes per trade. If you level many packages on every bid, compare bidding software with a bid desk before you buy either.

Leveling vs bid tabulation: who makes each one

Some writers use the two words for the same sheet, so check what a document means. Here they stay apart because a public owner keeps its own record of the bids it receives. TxDOT's manual for local government projects describes that bid tabulation as a way to evaluate bids and track construction costs. On federal sealed-bid work, FAR 14.402-1 has the officer open bids in public, read them aloud if practical and record each one. FAR 14.403 then has the officer complete an abstract of offers that stays open to public inspection for unclassified buys. Other federal awards follow other procedures, so check the solicitation. Table 4 sets the two documents side by side.

Table 4. Two documents with two owners.

On public work you sit on both sides. The owner's form on public work controls what you may write on your own bid, while the tabulation shows where your number landed. Leveling still applies to every sub quote under it.

Read the spread before you pick a number

Leveling changes the spread, and the spread tells you how far to trust the result. In Table 1 (illustrative figures) the next quote sat $8,000, or 8.0 percent, above the low and the high sat $12,000, or 12.0 percent, above it. After leveling, the next sits $1,000, or 0.9 percent, above the low and the high $4,000, or 3.6 percent. The plugs took $8,000 of the $12,000 out of the raw spread. If a spread stays wide after leveling, look for scope that still differs, a price that holds a mistake, or a sub who wants the job. Call the low sub and walk the scope rows with them, without showing any other bidder's price or your plugs.

Then ask how wrong a plug must be before the order changes. B leads C by $1,000. B and C tie if B's trench plug is $4,000 instead of $3,000, one third higher, or $40 a linear foot instead of $30. A ties B if its plugs total $11,000 instead of $15,000. For that, A's three plugs together would have to be $4,000 too high, about 27 percent of the $15,000 carried.

B's lead is thin, and B needs a plug while C needs none. Get B's trench price in writing before you decide: if it comes back above $4,000, C becomes the low leveled quote. When two leveled totals sit inside the plug uncertainty, lean toward the quote that needs fewer plugs.

Table 5 repeats the arithmetic across three trades with two quotes each, in illustrative figures.

Table 5. Illustrative figures. One trade flips, one holds, one narrows.

Table 5 shows each plug as one total. On a real sheet each is built as Table 2 builds its plugs. The raw lows add up to $46,000 + $30,000 + $24,000 = $100,000. The leveled lows add up to $50,000 + $30,000 + $24,500 = $104,500. So the raw lows understate the cheapest complete set by $4,500: $4,000 from the mechanical flip and $500 from the roofing plug.

Table 5 carries the same simplifications as Table 1: placeholder figures, and no tax, bond or schedule.

Price is not the only test. Check insurance and bond needs, and your history with the sub. With only two quotes the spread tells you little, so invite a third sub while there is time. If you are the sub, the general contractor levels your quote against others, and how to find bids and get invited covers getting onto their lists.

Law and the documents can narrow your choice. California, for example, requires a public-work bid to list each sub above one-half of 1 percent of the total bid, with a different threshold for streets and highways (Public Contract Code 4104). It also limits replacing a listed sub after the bid is accepted (section 4107). So level before you list. Other states differ, so read the instructions to bidders. After award, put what you learned from clarifications into the subcontract, because your sheet is not a contract document.

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