How to Get Good Bids from GCs: The Most Important Thing [and 6 Other Things]

And using the grocery store as a metaphor

It’s one of the most important pieces of information in a project, and one of the first questions anyone has:

“What does it cost?”

As a former estimator at a general contracting company, I learned firsthand how bids get put together, and what matters when estimators and GCs are trying to figure out how much a project costs.

First of all, the single most important thing, by far, to keep in mind: garbage in, garbage out.

If you don’t give a GC good information, you’re not going to get good information back. It’s as simple as that, and yet, it’s one of the biggest disconnects I see when owners are trying to get their projects priced.

They’ll give the GC a napkin sketch - or no drawing at all - and say “how much would a new kitchen cost” - and expect the GC to read their mind about level of finish, type of material, etc and to see through walls and to anticipate any possible hurdle [and promise that there won’t be any]. If the GC does ask what level of finish they’re looking for, they’ll say “somewhere in the middle, not too fancy, not too cheap.”

Um. Not helpful at all.

And the fact that they showed up unprepared and without an understanding of how the process works means the contractor is attaching “PITA” [pain in the ass] to their name in their head…and adding to the bid accordingly.

Here’s another way to think of it…it’s like standing at the door of the grocery store, looking inside, and asking “how much does dinner cost?” Well…