Estimating low voltage work, part 6: writing the proposal

The first five posts in this series covered the tools, vetting a job, the takeoff, handling the questions, and building the bid. At this point the number is reconciled and defensible. This post covers turning it into the document that goes out.

The proposal is the only part of all that work the customer ever sees. It is also read by people who were not in the takeoff: a project manager leveling six bids in an afternoon, an owner's representative comparing scope, and, if the job goes badly, an attorney reading it a year later with no memory of the conversation. A proposal written for those readers is worth more than a proposal written as a cover letter for a price.

What this post covers

• Who the document is written for. How a proposal to a general contractor differs from one to a building owner, and why the same scope gets described differently.
• The sections, in order. What belongs in a proposal and the order that survives being read quickly.
• The scope of work narrative. Writing scope by system so a reviewer can match it against the drawings.
• Presenting the price. Base bid, alternates, unit prices, and allowances, and what each one is for.
• The documents the price is based on. The section most proposals omit and the one that matters most in a dispute.
• Terms that protect the number. Validity, payment, schedule, and what happens when any of them changes.
• Formatting for bid leveling. Making the proposal easy to compare, on purpose.
• What stays out. The internal numbers that must never appear.

Know who is reading it

The same scope is described differently depending on who receives the proposal, and getting this wrong makes a competent bid look amateur.

A general contractor or construction manager is reading to level bids. Trade knowledge can be assumed. What they need is precision about where the low voltage scope stops and another trade's begins, because that boundary is what they have to reconcile across every proposal on the desk. Explanations of what a patch panel does are noise. A clear statement that core drilling is excluded is not.

A building owner, facilities director, or small business is reading to understand what they are buying. They may not know what an IDF is or why cable in plenum ceilings costs more. Scope still has to be precise, but it carries a sentence of plain explanation where a term would otherwise stop the reader. The risk with this audience is the opposite one: a proposal so dense with trade language that the customer cannot tell whether it covers what they asked for.

An engineer or consultant on a specified project is reading for compliance. They want to see specification sections referenced, product submittals named, and any deviation stated plainly rather than buried.

One proposal template can serve all three if the scope sections stay factual and the explanatory sentences are easy to add or remove. What cannot be shared is the tone. A proposal that reads as though it were written for someone else is the first thing a reviewer notices.

Knowing who will read the proposal is a separate question from knowing who it gets addressed to, and the second one has a firm answer. It is covered below.

The sections, in order

The order below puts the number and the scope near the front, because that is the order a reviewer reads in. Burying the price on page four does not make it feel smaller.

Project identification and transmittal

The top of the document establishes what it is, without ceremony: company name and license number, the date, a proposal number, the project name and address, who the proposal is addressed to, and which systems it covers. A short transmittal paragraph states that the company is pleased to submit a proposal for the named systems and references the documents it is based on.

The license number belongs here, not in the footer. On permitted work the reviewer is often checking it.

Address it to whoever invited the bid

The proposal is addressed to the party that invited the company to bid. Not the largest party on the project, not the general contractor by default, and not the owner. Whoever sent the invitation is the recipient.

This trips people up on projects with more than one tier. If an electrical contractor invited the bid and there is also a general contractor on the job, the proposal goes to the electrical contractor. On that project the low voltage company is a subcontractor to the electrical contractor, and the electrical contractor carries the low voltage scope in its own bid to the general contractor. Sending the proposal to the general contractor or the owner instead goes around the company that brought the opportunity in. It reads as an attempt to take their scope, and it costs both the relationship and the next invitation.

Three lines identify the recipient, in this order:

1. The project name, exactly as it appears in the bid documents.
2. The company the invitation came from.
3. The individual. This is the part that gets picked wrong, because a plan room commonly lists several names: an estimator, a project manager, a project coordinator, sometimes an owner's representative. If the invitation came from anyone other than the general contractor, the individual is the person who sent it. If the general contractor sent the invitation, the individual is the project contact listed in the plan room.

Being invited by more than one party on the same project is normal. Each invitation gets its own proposal, addressed to that party, with its own proposal number.

Scope of work

The scope narrative, broken out by system. This is covered in detail below.

Price

The base bid, then alternates, then unit prices. Covered below.

Inclusions, clarifications, exclusions, and assumptions

The four tools from part 4, selected for this project. How to write them well is the subject of the next post in this series, so this post places them rather than drafts them.

Order matters. Inclusions and clarifications read as confidence. Exclusions and assumptions read as caution. Leading with a page of exclusions sets a defensive tone before the reviewer has seen what the company is actually providing.

Documents this proposal is based on

The list of drawings, specification sections, addenda, and RFI responses the price was built from. This is the section most proposals leave out and the one that does the most work later. It gets its own section below.

Terms

Validity period, payment terms, schedule assumptions, warranty, and anything else that governs the number. Covered below.

Acceptance

A signature block with a place for a printed name, title, and date, and a line stating what signing means: that the signer accepts the scope and price as written, including the alternates marked as accepted. Without that sentence, a signed proposal with an unmarked alternate section is an argument waiting to happen.

Write the scope of work by system

The scope narrative is where a reviewer decides whether the proposal covers the job. It should be written so that a person holding the drawings can read a paragraph and check it against a sheet.

Organize by system, in the same order the systems appear in the specification when there is one. Within each system, describe the work in the order it gets installed: pathway, cable, devices, head end, then termination, testing, and documentation. For each system, state quantities. A scope that says "provide a structured cabling system" commits the company to whatever the reader imagines. A scope that says "furnish and install 66 Category 6 plenum cable drops, each terminated on a jack at the work area and on a 48-port patch panel in IDF 2" can be checked, and can be defended.

Quantities in the scope have to match the takeoff and the drawings. This sounds obvious. It is also the single most common inconsistency in proposals, usually because a drawing revision changed a count after the narrative was written. The reconciliation check from part 5 exists for this reason.

Keep the scope descriptive rather than promissory. There is a meaningful difference between describing what will be furnished and installed and promising a result. Phrases like "complete and operational system," "turnkey," and "all work necessary" sound confident and commit the company to an undefined quantity of work. A reviewer who wants that language will ask for it, and that is a decision to make deliberately rather than by accident of phrasing.

Name products where the specification names them, and state the basis of design where it does not. On specified work, list the manufacturer and model priced for each major component. On design-build work, state what was priced as the basis of design and that equivalent products may be substituted with approval. Either way, the reviewer knows what is behind the number.

Present the price so each part has a purpose

The base bid

One number, stated once, in a place a reviewer finds without looking. If the project is broken into phases, buildings, or systems the customer may award separately, present those as separate line items that sum to the base bid, because a bid that cannot be split will be split by the customer with a pencil.

State whether the base bid includes sales tax, and if it does not, say so plainly. Tax treatment on construction contracts varies by state and by contract type, and a number that turns out to have excluded tax after award is a difficult conversation.

Alternates

Add and deduct alternates, each with its own price and its own one-line scope. The uses for alternates are covered in part 4. The formatting rule is that each alternate must be independently understandable and independently priced, and dependent alternates must say what they depend on.

Number them. "Alternate 3" in a later conversation is unambiguous; "the camera one" is not.

Unit prices

Unit prices for the items most likely to be added or removed: an additional cable drop, an additional camera, an additional card reader. General contractors value them because they make small changes administratively cheap, and they protect the company from a change order negotiated from nothing under schedule pressure.

Two cautions. A unit price has to carry its share of mobilization, or adding four drops three months after the crew demobilized becomes a loss. And a unit price should state its conditions: the figure assumes work performed during the original installation period, in accessible ceilings, within the distances already covered.

Allowances

An allowance is a stated dollar amount carried for work whose quantity genuinely cannot be determined from the documents. It is an honest tool when used for a genuine unknown, such as pathway through an existing structure nobody can see into, and it is a crutch when used to avoid finishing a takeoff.

An allowance has to say what it covers, how it will be reconciled, and that unused amounts are credited. An allowance with no reconciliation mechanism is read by owners as padding, and read by contractors as money already earned. Both readings cause trouble.

List the documents the price is based on

This is the section that separates a proposal that holds up from one that does not.

A dispute about scope is almost never a dispute about what the drawings say. It is a dispute about which version of the drawings. Plan sets are revised during bidding, sometimes several times, and a general contractor working from revision 4 will sincerely believe the proposal covered revision 4. The only defense is a proposal that says exactly what it was priced from.

List, specifically:

• Drawing sheets by number, with the revision and date of each sheet the price relied on. Not "the architectural and electrical drawings." Sheet E2.1, revision 3, dated 14 August 2026.
• Specification sections by number and title, including the Division 01 sections that carry schedule, safety, and submittal requirements, since those were priced as labor in part 5.
• Addenda by number and date, each acknowledged. Most bid forms require this separately, and an unacknowledged addendum can disqualify a bid outright.
• RFI responses by number and date, where an answer changed what was priced.
• Site visit date, if one was made, since conditions observed on a given day are part of the basis.

Then state the relationship between the proposal and those documents. Where a proposal's scope, clarifications, and exclusions conflict with the attached documents, the proposal should say which governs. Without such a statement, the specification is generally read as controlling, which means carefully written exclusions can be read out of the agreement entirely. This is a clause worth having an attorney draft once and reusing, because the wording determines whether the rest of the proposal's protection functions at all.

Terms that keep the number from being held open

Validity period

State how long the price is good for, and what happens after. Thirty days is a common period on competitive work. The reason is covered in part 5: distributor quotes expire, and copper-indexed cable pricing can move substantially in weeks. A bid accepted four months later at last quarter's copper price is a loss the estimate never contemplated.

The sentence that follows the period matters as much as the period. Pricing expiring is not the same as pricing being automatically reconfirmed on request, and a proposal should say which it is.

Payment terms

State the deposit, the billing basis, and the payment timing. The cash flow check in part 5 produces the number this section needs: how much material the company would otherwise carry, and for how long.

Where the terms allow it, structure billing so a material delivery milestone covers the material purchase rather than leaving it against the company's working capital. On general contractor work, expect retainage and expect pay-when-paid language, and note that both are regulated differently from state to state.

Schedule assumptions

State the duration the price assumes and the working hours it assumes. The labor hours divided by crew size produced a working-day figure during reconciliation; that figure belongs here as an assumption, not as a commitment to a date the company does not control.

Say what a compressed schedule means. A price built on standard hours and a stated duration is not a price for the same work done in half the time with premium labor, and the proposal is the cheapest place to establish that.

Warranty

State the warranty period, what it covers, and when it starts. Substantial completion and final acceptance can be months apart on a large project, and a warranty that starts at the wrong one gives away free months of coverage. Manufacturer warranties on equipment are separate from the company's warranty on labor, and both should be named.

Format it for bid leveling

On competitive work the proposal will be read next to several others, quickly, by someone looking for differences. Formatting is not decoration in that situation.

Put the base bid where it is found in seconds. Keep the proposal to as few pages as the scope honestly allows, and if it runs long, lead with a one-page summary carrying the base bid, the alternates, and the systems covered. Use consistent headings so a reviewer comparing two proposals from the same company a year apart finds the same thing in the same place. Number the pages and put the project name and proposal number in the footer, because proposals get separated and photocopied.

The separately priced item from part 4 depends entirely on formatting. An item no other bidder caught only stands out if it is visible as its own line rather than absorbed into a narrative paragraph.

What stays out

Nothing in the proposal should reveal how the number was built.

Labor hours, labor rates, burden, markup percentages, supplier names, and quoted material costs stay internal. A proposal that shows hours invites a negotiation about hours. A proposal that shows material cost invites a customer to buy the material themselves and ask for a labor rate, which removes the material margin and leaves the company installing someone else's equipment under its own warranty.

Internal notes stay internal as well. Comments about the quality of the drawings, the competence of the designer, or the risk of the customer have a way of surviving into a document that gets forwarded.

The exception is a cost and markup breakdown required by the contract, which is common on public work and school projects. A build-up estimate produces that breakdown directly, as noted in part 5. Supplying it because the contract requires it is different from volunteering it.

Those requirements are a form of bid leveling. By forcing every bidder to break out cost and markup against the same limits, the owner removes most of the room bidders have to look different from one another. The bids come back looking similar on purpose, and the usual levers are gone: markup is capped, the scope is fixed by the documents, and undercutting on labor is visible in the breakdown.

What differentiates a bid under those conditions is accuracy and supplier pricing. Accuracy means the counts are right and nothing was missed, because on a leveled bid an omission is obvious rather than hidden inside a lump sum. Supplier pricing is the rest of it. Two companies can submit identical quantities, identical labor units, and identical markups, and still submit different numbers, because one of them buys better. A distributor relationship built over years, a project quote requested properly, and the volume the company does with that branch all show up in the material column. That is a long game, and it is one of the few advantages a leveled bid cannot take away.

Keep version control on proposals

Version control starts before anything is sent, not when the first revision goes out the door.

The number moves throughout the bid process. An RFI answer changes a quantity. An addendum adds a system. A drawing revision deletes half a floor. A distributor quote comes back under the catalog price. Each of those changes the bid, and each is worth capturing as its own version before the next change lands on top of it. An estimate worked in a single file that gets overwritten leaves no record of why a number moved, only the number it landed on.

That record is worth keeping even when nobody outside the company will ever ask for it. Six weeks later, when the question is why the bid went from $58,000 to $64,000, the useful answer is a version history naming addendum 3 and the response to RFI 12, not a recollection. It is also how an estimator catches an item that got priced twice, which happens when an addendum and an RFI answer address the same problem a week apart.

Internal revisions and issued revisions are not the same risk

An internal revision is a record the company keeps for itself. A mistake in one costs the time it takes to find and fix.

An issued revision is held by somebody else. That is where the real margin for error is. Once a proposal has been sent, a copy exists outside the company's control. It can be forwarded, printed, attached to a contract, or quoted back months later, and the company no longer decides which version is the one under discussion.

So the versioning has to distinguish the two. A simple proposal log does it (illustrative entries):

Anything on a line marked issued is a document the company has to be able to produce on demand and has to assume will be read back to it. Anything marked internal is working paper.

What every issued revision carries

Every issued revision needs a revision number, a date, and a line stating that it supersedes the previous version by number and date.

The reason is practical. A general contractor may end up holding three versions of the same proposal, and in a disagreement the version quoted back is rarely the latest one. A document that names what it replaces settles that in one sentence.

Keep every version, issued and internal. The superseded proposals are the record of how the scope moved during bidding, and that record is what supports the first change order.

Bringing it together

A proposal is the estimate made legible to someone who was not there. The scope narrative describes what will be installed in quantities a reviewer can check against the drawings. The price is presented so each part has a purpose: a base bid that matches the documents, alternates that are genuine options, unit prices that make small changes cheap, and allowances only where a quantity truly cannot be known. The document list fixes what the price was based on, and the governing clause makes the rest of the scope enforceable. The terms keep the number from being held open past the quotes behind it.

What the proposal does not do is protect the company by itself. The scope statements that do that work, the inclusions, clarifications, exclusions, and assumptions, are the ones placed but not drafted in this post. Written carelessly they are decoration. Written well they are the difference between a change order and absorbed cost.

Next in this series: inclusions and exclusions, and the scope library that produces them.

Planning and device counts are numbers. Those live on the calculators. The estimating workbook that follows the method in this series is in The Kit. The rest of this series is on the estimating page.

Related on this site

• Estimating low voltage work, part 5: building the bid
• Estimating low voltage work, part 4: handling the questions
• Calculators