The bid packet: what to gather before asking for a number

About half the bid requests that reach our desk are a single paragraph and an address. We price them anyway, but we price them with assumptions, and every assumption is a place the number can move later. The requests that come back as firm numbers are the ones that arrive with a packet. Here is what goes in it.

The documents

Drawings first, whatever stage they are at. A permit set is ideal. A schematic set is fine. A hand sketch with dimensions is still better than nothing, and for a renovation, photographs of the existing rooms and a copy of the original plans, if the building owner has them, tell us what we are working inside of. Add the survey and the geotechnical report if the job touches dirt. Add the brand standard or the landlord's tenant criteria if either one applies, because those documents define finishes and details the drawings often leave out. Add the specification book if the architect wrote one. Each document you send removes an allowance from our number.

The scope in your own words

Drawings show what. A short written scope tells us why, and the why changes the price. Two hundred words covering the building type, the square footage, the room or unit count, the finish level you have in mind, and what you want the finished space to do for you. Tell us whether the building stays open during the work. A hotel renovating with guests in the rooms upstairs, a store that cannot close for a season, a clinic that sees patients four days a week: each of those is a different job, with phasing, dust walls, after-hours work and a different crew count, and we cannot price the phasing if we do not know it exists.

The date, and what sets it

Tell us the opening day and what is behind it. A lease commencement, a brand-mandated PIP deadline, a franchise agreement, a school year, a season. We build the schedule backward from that date, and the answer to whether the date is achievable is part of what you are buying with the bid. If the date is fixed and the scope is large, say so up front, and we will price the acceleration honestly rather than discovering the constraint after the number is on the table.

The budget, honestly

Owners sometimes hold the budget back, worried that naming it invites a number that fills it. Our view is the opposite. A planning range lets us tell you in the first conversation whether the scope and the money are in the same neighborhood, and if they are not, we can suggest what to trim or phase before anyone spends weeks on a detailed estimate for a project that cannot proceed as drawn. The range does not have to be precise. It has to be real.

Who is on the team and what you want back

List the architect, the engineers, the FF&E vendor, the signage company, the brand representative, and where each of them stands. If there is no architect yet, tell us, and we can bring design coordination into the package. Then tell us the format you want the bid in. Ask every bidder for the same breakdown, with exclusions and allowances spelled out, so you can set three proposals next to each other and compare the same line items. A bid that hides its exclusions is a bid that has not finished pricing your job.

When the packet is complete, the person who reads it is a principal of the company, and that is the person who will be on your site when the work starts and in the building on the day it opens. Send the plans and the packet, in whatever state they are in, and we will tell you what is missing and what we can price today.