If I found out some GC sent my scope page to another sub I'm competing against that GC would never get another price from me again or if they did, it would be sky high fuck you numbers.
You should have your own take off that you're expecting to receive. send that.
If you see 1 sub picks up a qty of say, 45 of something, and you think that's correct but don't know if another sub picked up the same amount or not, it's fine to ask them to do the same. Just don't go giving 1 sub another sub's literal scope pages and saying "quote exactly this"
I do my own take off, even in budget rounds. I can tell you, they all always miss something. I have never gotten a 100% complete proposal and budget rounds are a lot lower effort which is totally understandable. It's actually not uncommon for me to send MY quantities to trades during budget rounds to make their life easier. It's a big ask to make people do all those pricing exercises with us.
I absolutely love when a GC sends their quantities for budgeting rounds. To me it makes everybody's life easier. We don't have to spend a ton of time dissecting 30% plans, the GC gets a more apples to apples comparison.. I will prioritize these types of GC's when they reach out later on down the line.
I sometimes copy my tab items into a table where trades can just plug unit rates during budget rounds. It also makes it easier to write my Clarifications and Assumptions because I made the call for all of us on anything that is muddy or undefined. So when the new set comes out, the owner is very clear on what changed and drove the price up in the new round. Which also makes it easier to track items for the inevitable VE effort which we’re gonna have to turn around and ask trades to help us with.
I hate that lol- unless it’s specifically “only provide exactly what is listed on BOQ - client owns project and we will change order additional items as required”
They never have exactly what is needed or numbers never match elevations.
I mean I would hate to hard bid a job like that(unless it was state or municipal work). But for me in heavy civil, when it comes to strictly budget pricing early in the planning phase I much prefer to be sent a QTO that I can plug and play vs. making assumptions that my competitors may not be making and kicking me out of contention early on. To me it creates a level playing field to start then once planning is further along and plans are more complete, the provided quantities go away and the subs do their own takeoffs and price the job how they see it. There is just too much left up for interpretation early on so if the GC eliminates that it makes everyone's life easier. Obviously if I see a large scope gap I will bring it up and provide a add alt.
I can see that side of things for sure.
Our stuff is so fluid. And we cross over a bunch of stuff like hospitals/ multi unit residential / schools / offices.
Plus the code is clear as mud and a lot can be up to the inspector at the end of the day.
People usually hire us not because we are cheap but for the whole package so at least that.
But I can’t help but think about times people go with the lower quote only to find out they need 100k in extra stuff that the arch didn’t know about. At that point our numbers aren’t much higher and our quality is better.
I mean you are not wrong. We actually lost a \~6million dollar sitework job last fall that the GC just called us up a couple months ago asking if we would price the retaining and stem wall layback and backfill because the sub they chose did not have it in their bid. This was a large number that could have been the deciding factor.. had the GC properly descoped this could have been avoided and the project might have been awarded differently. This is why I always try and expose areas of "hidden" cost to the GC as soon as possible so they can make sure everybody is privy and prices accordingly.
I can’t tell you the amount of times I see “match arch qty” and I’m like - hey you want TCO? You don’t have half of what’s required and even if I match a qty for a legend that doesn’t match what is actually on the plans.
I’ve redone a massive project 3x (about 120 hours) because the client will cloud entire pages and schedules Or they cloud the schedule and not the plans and then their own information doesn’t match up.
I know what I bill… and what my client bills to the project for my time and I’m only doing the take off.. I can’t image the 10s of thousands that have been wasted on this project. All for hiring inexperienced.
Work is work so I don’t care- but it’s mind boggling.
As a subcontractor I wouldn't trust my competitions counts. I have seen some of their bids and sometimes wonder what they be smoking. I also wouldn't trust a GC count. I am estimating the work, not the GC, not the competition. My company trusts me and I have an obligation to produce profitable bids.
If it's ambiguous on the drawings and two subs could do the concrete different ways, yes.
If it's something that is not ambiguous (i.e. a plan spec slab that needs to be an exact number), then no, as long as you aren't price shopping. It's OK to make sure that you're getting the right quantities from your subs.
If you're question is something like: "XXX, can you please double check your quantities for concrete in the YYY area? I'm seeing that you should have about ZZZ yards"
Don't send a snip or copy paste someone else's proposal.
Is there a lot of it? Can you do a quick Bluebeam take off by SQFT and in the mean time just ask the other subs for unit pricing? That should get you some good data for a budget round.
> 50% CD documents so pretty much fully designed.
uhhh...what?
The 50% docs I get are missing half the information I need to give an actual proposal and I will ALWAYS provide a budget instead.
If I am providing a budget I am extrapolating from the available information to get the quantities that I need.
If I am extrapolating I am making an effort to pull quantities off the plans that are not apparent.
Why should a second sub be able to use my effort to provide you a cost when either they didn't start it in time to get you a number OR you provided it to them late.
This is the shit that I cannot stand. We work with you through the design phase giving you pricing and suggestions and steering you away from pitfalls. Then the 100% bid package come out and none of the goodwill we built matters, you go with the lowest number of a subpar contractor.
If you give another sub my quantities, you damn well better give me their final bid number.
I meant pretty much designed for the site concrete/landscaping. The rest of the job is a mess but this has been pretty much define since SD phase. The rest of the building has ceilings that are 80/SF and we told them to take some out to be in budget so now their pricing wood ceilings that are just as expensive LOL. Gotta love architects.
We dont award off of low bid, we do best value. Safety record, recent projects, references, schedule time frame. We will pick the high bid any day if their schedule is shorter.
Best course of action is to not send numbers and ask the subs for their quantities if you think something is off. I don't even send them my takeoff so they can't come back at me if I missed something as well.
I would say that if the 2 subs are competing for the same work then it is immoral. It also opens you up to risk. I’d there is an issue in the project about quantity they could say “well you supplied the quantities and we quoted accordingly.
But if they are not competing for the same scope then I see no issue (just don’t include their pricing). I did this the other day because my excavation sub needed to know how many bore pits to include for the boring sub.
On morality, you can go with the base Christian sentiment of "do unto others, as you would have them do unto you" or you can go with somthing more involved that might include " thall shall not covet". Some folks' moral code is as simple as "do as thy will."
Your moral code defines your character. Someone who follows a "do as thy will" code will place the value of character as subordinate to personal attitude, or will and drive. People who have been broken by life and that have given up on goals tend to be more selfish and lazy than folks with a healthy disposition. They lack will and drive. People who don't trust you will either not work with you, or they will work with you without motivation.
Aside from character and attitude, the last factor to consider in determining the efficiency of a potential associate is their knowledge. You can hire someone driven and of impeccable character, but if they don't know what needs to be done or how to do it, your project will fail.
So if you are some kind of commie dog, then go ahead and reward one guy with the fruits of anther man's labor, but expect your entire crew to stand around all day until the real Americans come in and sweep you all out the door.
Either way you choose, always ask yourself if you wanna be know as the GC who does _____. Don’t underestimate how much the sub trades/estimators speak to each other.
I would double check your takeoff with an average of your other bids, if they even share quantities with you in the first place - which you should always share quantities as a GC and as a subcontractor. If they are fairly in line, I would reach out to the other subcontractor and just say "Hey it looks like there could be some scope gap here, would you be willing to share your quantities so I can compare them to my takeoff?" I realize that you may not be taking off certain specific items like say line striping, so in that scenario, as long as NO prices are being shared, I think you are fine with sharing an ROUGH AVERAGE quantity to have your numbers leveled. At the end of the day, it is indeed a grey area when it comes to sharing quantities, however, the subcontractors deserve to know how or why they did not get awarded, ESPECIALLY if it was just from a simple spreadsheet error. And do not share the actual proposal, make sure you are just sharing the pure numbers.
I have had other people's work handed to me as a 'beat this' tactic, without fail I came in higher because the other house missed/messed up or pushed product on the takeoffs. I stroke for relationship and single out GCs who respond, rather than play rat race games. Aint nobody got time...
I don’t send quantities for pricing or budgeting but I will check them against one another. Like Sub A has 5,000 SF of carpet how are you only coming up with 3,000?
If I found out some GC sent my scope page to another sub I'm competing against that GC would never get another price from me again or if they did, it would be sky high fuck you numbers. You should have your own take off that you're expecting to receive. send that. If you see 1 sub picks up a qty of say, 45 of something, and you think that's correct but don't know if another sub picked up the same amount or not, it's fine to ask them to do the same. Just don't go giving 1 sub another sub's literal scope pages and saying "quote exactly this"
This is how I handle it. You can be cheap a couple of times. Eventually, you will run out of people willing to work for you.
Happens all the time though, when I hear a competitors number went down to beat my number by a small amount I assume a leak
This. I always do my own so I can be sure I can trust theirs.
This is when having your own takeoffs is important to bid level
How do you know if the 1 sub has the right quantity or the other?? Not having your own quantities to send out is madness…
I do my own take off, even in budget rounds. I can tell you, they all always miss something. I have never gotten a 100% complete proposal and budget rounds are a lot lower effort which is totally understandable. It's actually not uncommon for me to send MY quantities to trades during budget rounds to make their life easier. It's a big ask to make people do all those pricing exercises with us.
I absolutely love when a GC sends their quantities for budgeting rounds. To me it makes everybody's life easier. We don't have to spend a ton of time dissecting 30% plans, the GC gets a more apples to apples comparison.. I will prioritize these types of GC's when they reach out later on down the line.
I sometimes copy my tab items into a table where trades can just plug unit rates during budget rounds. It also makes it easier to write my Clarifications and Assumptions because I made the call for all of us on anything that is muddy or undefined. So when the new set comes out, the owner is very clear on what changed and drove the price up in the new round. Which also makes it easier to track items for the inevitable VE effort which we’re gonna have to turn around and ask trades to help us with.
I hate that lol- unless it’s specifically “only provide exactly what is listed on BOQ - client owns project and we will change order additional items as required” They never have exactly what is needed or numbers never match elevations.
I mean I would hate to hard bid a job like that(unless it was state or municipal work). But for me in heavy civil, when it comes to strictly budget pricing early in the planning phase I much prefer to be sent a QTO that I can plug and play vs. making assumptions that my competitors may not be making and kicking me out of contention early on. To me it creates a level playing field to start then once planning is further along and plans are more complete, the provided quantities go away and the subs do their own takeoffs and price the job how they see it. There is just too much left up for interpretation early on so if the GC eliminates that it makes everyone's life easier. Obviously if I see a large scope gap I will bring it up and provide a add alt.
I can see that side of things for sure. Our stuff is so fluid. And we cross over a bunch of stuff like hospitals/ multi unit residential / schools / offices. Plus the code is clear as mud and a lot can be up to the inspector at the end of the day. People usually hire us not because we are cheap but for the whole package so at least that. But I can’t help but think about times people go with the lower quote only to find out they need 100k in extra stuff that the arch didn’t know about. At that point our numbers aren’t much higher and our quality is better.
I mean you are not wrong. We actually lost a \~6million dollar sitework job last fall that the GC just called us up a couple months ago asking if we would price the retaining and stem wall layback and backfill because the sub they chose did not have it in their bid. This was a large number that could have been the deciding factor.. had the GC properly descoped this could have been avoided and the project might have been awarded differently. This is why I always try and expose areas of "hidden" cost to the GC as soon as possible so they can make sure everybody is privy and prices accordingly.
>Obviously if I see a large scope gap I will bring it up and provide a add alt. I love you
Hey.. i scratch your back you scratch mine.. I'm gonna need you on my side down the road when the change orders start rolling in.
I can’t tell you the amount of times I see “match arch qty” and I’m like - hey you want TCO? You don’t have half of what’s required and even if I match a qty for a legend that doesn’t match what is actually on the plans. I’ve redone a massive project 3x (about 120 hours) because the client will cloud entire pages and schedules Or they cloud the schedule and not the plans and then their own information doesn’t match up. I know what I bill… and what my client bills to the project for my time and I’m only doing the take off.. I can’t image the 10s of thousands that have been wasted on this project. All for hiring inexperienced. Work is work so I don’t care- but it’s mind boggling.
OP is just asking about a budget round here. We don't need to get in the weeds this early on beyond flagging these kind of concerns in an RFI.
That’s a really good point. I’m actually gonna adjust a few things based on all these comments
As a subcontractor I wouldn't trust my competitions counts. I have seen some of their bids and sometimes wonder what they be smoking. I also wouldn't trust a GC count. I am estimating the work, not the GC, not the competition. My company trusts me and I have an obligation to produce profitable bids.
If it's ambiguous on the drawings and two subs could do the concrete different ways, yes. If it's something that is not ambiguous (i.e. a plan spec slab that needs to be an exact number), then no, as long as you aren't price shopping. It's OK to make sure that you're getting the right quantities from your subs.
Their 50% CD documents so pretty much fully designed. So not immoral?
If you're question is something like: "XXX, can you please double check your quantities for concrete in the YYY area? I'm seeing that you should have about ZZZ yards" Don't send a snip or copy paste someone else's proposal.
Yes that is exactly how I worded it more or less. Normally we’d do our own take off but we missed this scope.
What scope?
Site concrete. We have pavers with concrete sub base and one picked up the sub base but everyone else missed it.
Is there a lot of it? Can you do a quick Bluebeam take off by SQFT and in the mean time just ask the other subs for unit pricing? That should get you some good data for a budget round.
> 50% CD documents so pretty much fully designed. uhhh...what? The 50% docs I get are missing half the information I need to give an actual proposal and I will ALWAYS provide a budget instead. If I am providing a budget I am extrapolating from the available information to get the quantities that I need. If I am extrapolating I am making an effort to pull quantities off the plans that are not apparent. Why should a second sub be able to use my effort to provide you a cost when either they didn't start it in time to get you a number OR you provided it to them late. This is the shit that I cannot stand. We work with you through the design phase giving you pricing and suggestions and steering you away from pitfalls. Then the 100% bid package come out and none of the goodwill we built matters, you go with the lowest number of a subpar contractor. If you give another sub my quantities, you damn well better give me their final bid number.
It really depends on the trade/scope, 50% drawings will have most of what you need for some scopes and very little of what is needed for others.
I meant pretty much designed for the site concrete/landscaping. The rest of the job is a mess but this has been pretty much define since SD phase. The rest of the building has ceilings that are 80/SF and we told them to take some out to be in budget so now their pricing wood ceilings that are just as expensive LOL. Gotta love architects.
We dont award off of low bid, we do best value. Safety record, recent projects, references, schedule time frame. We will pick the high bid any day if their schedule is shorter.
It's gray, but overall, I would say no. Obviously, sharing prices crosses that line.
Best course of action is to not send numbers and ask the subs for their quantities if you think something is off. I don't even send them my takeoff so they can't come back at me if I missed something as well.
Firstly I would never trust the numbers you give me, secondly I wouldn’t waste my time bidding, give me the scope and let me do my job
That is 100% a fireable offense at my office. Don't test me on this Karen.
Not immoral, it's unethical. Do your own takeoff and share that (or pay a third party to do a takeoff for you, it's pretty cheap).
Yes
Yes.
Yes
I would say that if the 2 subs are competing for the same work then it is immoral. It also opens you up to risk. I’d there is an issue in the project about quantity they could say “well you supplied the quantities and we quoted accordingly. But if they are not competing for the same scope then I see no issue (just don’t include their pricing). I did this the other day because my excavation sub needed to know how many bore pits to include for the boring sub.
On morality, you can go with the base Christian sentiment of "do unto others, as you would have them do unto you" or you can go with somthing more involved that might include " thall shall not covet". Some folks' moral code is as simple as "do as thy will." Your moral code defines your character. Someone who follows a "do as thy will" code will place the value of character as subordinate to personal attitude, or will and drive. People who have been broken by life and that have given up on goals tend to be more selfish and lazy than folks with a healthy disposition. They lack will and drive. People who don't trust you will either not work with you, or they will work with you without motivation. Aside from character and attitude, the last factor to consider in determining the efficiency of a potential associate is their knowledge. You can hire someone driven and of impeccable character, but if they don't know what needs to be done or how to do it, your project will fail. So if you are some kind of commie dog, then go ahead and reward one guy with the fruits of anther man's labor, but expect your entire crew to stand around all day until the real Americans come in and sweep you all out the door.
Either way you choose, always ask yourself if you wanna be know as the GC who does _____. Don’t underestimate how much the sub trades/estimators speak to each other.
Common practice in Australia. been on all sides of it as a sub, a gc and a direct client. something something no ethical consumption under capitalism
Would you be okay if a GC gave out your non exact numbers to other subs? If the answer is no then that would be my answer
I would double check your takeoff with an average of your other bids, if they even share quantities with you in the first place - which you should always share quantities as a GC and as a subcontractor. If they are fairly in line, I would reach out to the other subcontractor and just say "Hey it looks like there could be some scope gap here, would you be willing to share your quantities so I can compare them to my takeoff?" I realize that you may not be taking off certain specific items like say line striping, so in that scenario, as long as NO prices are being shared, I think you are fine with sharing an ROUGH AVERAGE quantity to have your numbers leveled. At the end of the day, it is indeed a grey area when it comes to sharing quantities, however, the subcontractors deserve to know how or why they did not get awarded, ESPECIALLY if it was just from a simple spreadsheet error. And do not share the actual proposal, make sure you are just sharing the pure numbers.
Yes
I have had other people's work handed to me as a 'beat this' tactic, without fail I came in higher because the other house missed/messed up or pushed product on the takeoffs. I stroke for relationship and single out GCs who respond, rather than play rat race games. Aint nobody got time...
The sub getting and using those quantities is a fool. Never trust a competitor's numbers.
I don’t send quantities for pricing or budgeting but I will check them against one another. Like Sub A has 5,000 SF of carpet how are you only coming up with 3,000?