Responding to bid invitations and RFPs

Answer bid invitations when the scope, qualifications, payment terms and schedule fit your business. Read the submission and award rules before investing in a takeoff. For bids you choose to pursue, record every deadline, obtain outside paperwork early, and check the complete package before submitting.

Identify the solicitation and award rules

How the award gets decided changes how you spend your time.

• Invitation to bid (ITB or IFB). In federal sealed bidding, a responsive bid complies with material requirements, and the bidder must also be responsible, meaning qualified to perform. Read the stated award basis; do not assume every public procurement uses the same rules. See FAR 14.301.
• Request for proposal (RFP). Scored on more than price: approach, schedule, key people, past projects, sometimes an interview. The RFP names the criteria and often the weightings, so the written narrative is real work.
• Request for qualifications or statement of qualifications (SOQ). Typically asks about capability and experience. Check the full title: RFQ can also mean request for quotation, which does ask for price.

Whether the invite came through a GC's estimating platform, an agency procurement portal or SAM.gov, pull five dates out before you open a drawing: the mandatory pre-bid walk, the question deadline, the last date addenda will be issued, the bid due date and time, and how long your price has to stay open afterward.

Check whether the bid fits your business

Answer these before the takeoff, not after:

• Do you know who sent it? A named PM who has used you is a different invitation from a "Dear Contractor" plan-room blast. Ask how many subs are bidding your scope; some GCs will tell you.
• Is the whole scope yours? If a spec section covers a trade you would sub out at a guess, you are not bidding, you are gambling.
• Do you meet the insurance and bonding requirements today? Not "could you get there" — do your current limits and bond line clear the exhibit as written?
• Is it prevailing wage? Some federal and federally assisted construction work is covered by Davis-Bacon requirements, and state or local work can carry its own rules. Read the solicitation's wage determination and payroll instructions; price from those documents rather than your usual labor rate.
• Can your backlog take the schedule? Watch for liquidated damages per day and a start date landing on work you already sold.
• How do you get paid? Retainage, pay-when-paid language and 60 to 90 day terms all cost you float. Price them or pass.

A fast, polite no is worth sending. Reply the same day, say why in one line, and ask to stay on the list.

Calculate estimating cost per job won

Bidding is unpaid overhead, so it needs a number. An illustrative time budget for a mid-size commercial bid:

Fourteen hours at $75 an hour is about $1,050 per bid. That is the cheap part. The expensive part is how many you lose:

Every one of those percentages comes back out of the jobs you win. Bidding more work increases estimating overhead whether or not you win more jobs. Run it with your own hours and rate — the shape matters more than these figures.

The paperwork with a lead time

Some documents depend on your agent, surety or accountant. Request them when you decide to bid. The table gives illustrative planning allowances, not delivery promises; confirm actual timing with each provider before committing.

Check the insurance exhibit for exact limits and endorsement wording, and ask your agent to confirm availability and timing. A bid bond is only available through a surety arrangement, with the solicitation setting its amount and form. Read the bonding section first. Federal construction can trigger Miller Act bond requirements, while states set their own public-work rules; confirm the applicable requirement in the solicitation and with your surety.

Your safety record gets screened too. Some owners and GCs will not prequalify a sub whose experience modification rate is above 1.0.

Ask your questions inside the window

Solicitations set a deadline for questions, usually a week or so before the bid date, and answers come back to every bidder as a written addendum. Use the authorized question-and-answer process. Do not rely on an informal answer unless it is confirmed as the solicitation requires.

So read the file early enough to have questions, and ask about the gaps that move your price: which trade owns the penetrations, whether existing conditions were surveyed, what the allowance covers, whether that named manufacturer is available to you at all. Then acknowledge every addendum on the bid form.

Check material submission requirements

A bid can be rejected for failing a material instruction. Check these points before submission:

• Late submission. Treat the deadline as firm. Federal sealed-bid rules have narrow exceptions, not a general grace period; other buyers set their own rules.
• Missing addendum acknowledgment, or the wrong revision of the bid form.
• No bid bond, or a bond for the wrong amount.
• Missing attachments: non-collusion affidavit, DBE or MBE forms, subcontractor listing, license number where the state requires it on the bid itself.
• Blank required prices or alternates. Follow the form's instructions for zero, excluded and not-applicable items.

One nuance worth getting right. On private GC work, a scope letter listing inclusions and exclusions is standard practice and protects you later. On a public hard bid, qualifying your bid that way can make it non-responsive. Same letter, opposite outcome — follow the instructions to bidders in front of you.

Prepare the priced scope and required bid forms

Most of those fourteen hours are takeoff and phone calls, but assembly is what eats the evening before a deadline. That is where your own priced line items pay: you describe the scope, use the services and unit prices you already saved, and spend what is left on the parts of this job that are genuinely different. DoneQuote can hold those services and selling prices and help draft the scope and priced lines. Review the quantities, exclusions and totals, then transfer them to required bid forms where necessary. Keep the complete package you actually submitted, including any attachments.

Track bid results by source

In a single-award competition with five eligible bidders, four will not win. Other solicitations may make multiple awards or none. Judge your results against the actual award process and competitors, rather than treating every loss as proof of a pricing error.

Watch your hit rate per source instead. Log every bid: who invited you, the scope, hours spent, your number, the outcome. After twenty or thirty entries you can see which GCs and agencies actually award to you, and those are the invitations worth fourteen hours next time.

Public bid results are public, so request the tabulation and read the spread. Compare the spread with the scope and award criteria. A large gap is a reason to recheck quantities, omissions and supplier pricing, not proof that your estimate is wrong.