Estimating low voltage work, part 7: inclusions and exclusions

Part 4 covered deciding which questions belong in the proposal and which of the four tools to reach for: a clarification, an exclusion, an assumption, or an alternate. Part 6 placed them in the document. This post covers writing what goes in them.

Knowing that core drilling should be excluded is the easy part. Writing an exclusion that still means what it was meant to mean when a project manager reads it eleven months later, under pressure, looking for a reason the work is included, is the part that takes craft.

What this post covers

• Two instruments, in order. The scope inclusion and exclusion matrix, then the project inclusions, assumptions, and exclusions.
• How a clause is built. The three parts of a statement that holds up, and the phrases that commit a company to unbounded labor.
• Demarcation. Where scope ends physically and functionally, which prevents more disputes than any exclusion list.
• The gray areas by system. Cabling, access control, video, and fiber inside and outside the building.
• Making the scope govern. Why carefully written exclusions can be read out of an agreement.
• An exclusion, or a priced line. When a boundary is a refusal and when it is an offer.

Two instruments, in this order

The scope statements in a proposal are not one thing. They are two, and they appear in a fixed order after the scope narrative.

First the scope of work inclusion and exclusion matrix, a single table covering every system on the job. It answers one question per row: was this priced, and on what footing. It is a quick reference, not the scope. The narrative is the scope.

Then the proposal inclusions, assumptions, and exclusions, written as prose, applying to the project as a whole rather than to any one system.

The order is not arbitrary. A reviewer wants to know what was priced before they read the terms it was priced under. The matrix answers thirty questions in fifteen seconds and prevents most of the ones that would otherwise come back as email.

The matrix is built, not filled in

It is tempting to treat the matrix as a standing form with the same rows every time. It is not. It gets built for each job, and two filters decide what goes in it.

What is actually in the bid. A row only exists if the systems being priced could raise the question. If nothing in the scope is network connected, there is no row for network switches. If there is no head end and no server, there is no row for software licenses. Rows for systems that are not in the bid pad the table and bury the rows that matter.

What the documents leave open. A specification that clearly assigns something does not need a row. The rows come from the gaps. If the specification says nothing about patch cords, that is a row, because the reader will otherwise assume whichever answer suits them. If the drawings show a fire alarm panel and nothing says who makes the interface connection, that is a row.

This is the same work as the takeoff. An estimator already knows what a system requires, and reading the documents against that knowledge produces the question log from part 3. The matrix is one of the places those items land when they are closed out.

An illustrative matrix, built for one project. Both the rows and the marks belong to that job (illustrative entries):

One row is named carefully on purpose. "Bonding" alone is ambiguous in a trade where bonding also means the grounding system, and three columns away sits telecom grounding and bonding. The row name is the entire statement, so it has to survive being scanned quickly.

The marks carry more than yes and no

A plain X answers the row. Three other marks answer it with a qualification, and a legend sits directly under the table:

P = Partial O = By Others S = Subcontracted

Each says something an X cannot (illustrative entries):

S commits the company. Core drilling marked S means the work is in the price and a subcontractor performs it. The distinction that matters is who the reader calls when it goes wrong, and the answer is the company, not the sub. S is a commitment with a note about how it gets done, not a softer form of included.

O names the party. "Excluded" alone tells a reader the company is not doing something but not who is, and on a project with four trades that ambiguity gets resolved in whoever's favor speaks first.

P marks an item two trades both touch. The fire alarm interface is the standard case. The bid includes landing the interface wiring on the panel or power supply and testing it. It does not include the module, the programming, or the fire alarm contractor's time. Neither included nor excluded is true, and no single mark can carry it. S and O still answer the row. P does not. It flags a shared boundary and creates an obligation to locate that boundary in the scope narrative, which is why part 6 writes the fire alarm line out in scope of work by system. A P with nothing behind it is the worst row on the page, because it announces a shared boundary and never locates it.

Every row gets a mark, and every P gets a sentence.

When a gap is not a matrix row

A row works when the answer is a decision. When the answer is a quantity nobody can determine, or a condition the price depends on, the gap goes somewhere else.

Structured cabling is the clean example. The system requires a telecommunications room, and plenty of plan sets show none. Three answers are defensible and silence is not one of them: an allowance, a stated amount for the room build-out with what it covers and how it reconciles; an assumption, that the owner provides a conditioned room with power and the pathway entering it, naming what happens if that is not the case; or an exclusion, placing the build-out outside the price and naming who carries it.

The failure is pricing the cabling, saying nothing about the room, and discovering at rough-in that everyone assumed somebody else had it.

Adjacent rows do work a sentence does badly

One grouping in the main table shows what the format is for. Cabling installation is included. Category cable and multiconductor cable are excluded. Three rows, and together they say the company is installing cable it is not furnishing. In prose that takes a careful sentence and still invites the question. As three marks it is unmistakable, and a reviewer leveling bids can see immediately that one proposal carries the material and another does not.

The principle holds in prose as well. Every boundary has two sides, and stating one side leaves the other to interpretation. Excluding line voltage power is incomplete on its own, because it raises the question of what the company does provide at the power supply:

Included: termination of the low voltage side of all access control power supplies, and final connection of field wiring to the power supply terminals.

Excluded: line voltage circuits, conduit, and the final electrical connection to the power supply, all by the electrical contractor.

Read together, there is no gap. Read apart, the gap is where a change order argument lives. The useful question when drafting is not whether a statement is accurate but whether a reader could find daylight on either side of it.

The proposal statements, in order

After the matrix come the project-wide statements: inclusions, then assumptions, then exclusions.

Inclusions state what the company carries across the whole project rather than within one system: the workmanship warranty and its term, coordination, mobilization, site-specific obligations, project-specific insurance.

Assumptions state the conditions the price depends on, each naming what happens when the condition is not met. That is what turns an assumption from an observation into a change order mechanism agreed to in advance.

Exclusions state the boundaries. Conduit and back boxes, line voltage connections, patching and repair of architectural surfaces, door preparation and hardware selection.

The order matters for how the document reads. Inclusions and assumptions establish what the company is doing and under what conditions. Exclusions then land as boundaries on a defined scope. Reversed, the proposal opens with a page of refusals before the reader has seen what is being provided.

How a clause is built

This section is about the prose statements, and about the sentence every P in the matrix obligates. A row with a plain mark needs a clear item name and nothing else.

A statement that holds up has three parts. Not every statement needs all three, but a statement missing one it needed is where disputes start.

What. The specific item or activity, named the way the trade names it, specific enough that a reader can point at it on a drawing.

By whom. Who performs it. "By others" is weak. "By the electrical contractor" is useful, and it tells the general contractor whose number should carry the cost.

What happens if. For assumptions and conditional statements, the consequence when the condition is not met. An assumption with no stated consequence is an observation.

An assumption with all three parts:

Pricing assumes existing conduit and pathway between IDF 2 and IDF 3 is intact, accessible, and has capacity for the new cabling. Pathway found to be blocked, collapsed, or at capacity will be reported before work proceeds, and the additional pathway will be priced as a change order.

Write for the reader who has no context

The person who reads a scope statement in a dispute was not in the takeoff, did not see the drawings at bid time, and has no interest in what was meant. They have the words.

Use the same term for the same thing throughout the document, even where variety would read better. If the narrative says "work area outlet," the inclusions should not say "jack" and the exclusions "faceplate." Spell out an abbreviation the first time it appears. Internal shorthand has no place in the document at all: a note that the bid excludes "the usual GC stuff" means nothing to a reader and everything to an opposing attorney.

Name the condition rather than characterizing it. An adjective like "adequate" is a judgment, and in a dispute the other party is the one who gets to make it. State what the price actually assumed:

Pricing assumes accessible hard-lid or drop tile ceilings during normal working hours, Monday through Friday, 7:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.

The ceiling types name the condition the labor units were built for, which is what the adjustment factors in part 5 price against, so a hard-lid ceiling found with no access panels falls outside the assumption instead of becoming a matter of opinion. The hours close the other half, because the same ceiling worked at night in an occupied building is a different price.

The phrases that transfer undefined work

Some language sounds like professional construction writing and functions as an open commitment. It turns up most often in inclusion lists, where it reads as generous.

The problem with every phrase above is the same, and it is not the wording. Each one moves a quantity decision from bid time, when it could have been priced, to construction, when it gets argued. Whatever labor it absorbs was never in the estimate, so it comes out of the margin reconciled in part 5 rather than out of a change order. Nobody writes a change order for coordinating with other trades, because the proposal already committed the company to it. The work gets done, because the system has to function. The hours get spent, because somebody has to spend them. The only number that moves is the profit on the job.

One exception. Where a specification requires that language, matching it is correct, since a base bid that refuses the specification's own words can be found noncompliant. The protection then comes from the demarcation statements rather than from rewording the specification.

Demarcation is the real protection

Most scope disputes are not disagreements about whether work was in the price. They are disagreements about where one trade's responsibility ends.

Physical demarcation names the point where the company's material and labor stop. It is a place, and it can be pointed at.

Cabling terminates on the jack at the work area outlet and on the patch panel in the IDF. Patch cords at either end are excluded.

Functional demarcation is the one that gets missed, because the work has no physical location. Who programs the system, who commissions it, who trains the users, who holds the administrative credentials.

Included: enrollment of up to 25 credentials for commissioning and acceptance testing. Excluded: cardholder database population, ongoing credential enrollment, and integration with the owner's directory services.

Without a statement like that, "the access control system" implicitly includes typing in nine hundred employees, and nobody priced it. Part 6 bounds the programming and training side of the same problem. This is the data side, and it is usually the larger number.

Two further boundaries have no physical location at all. Who holds the administrative credentials after handoff, which is a security decision the owner should make deliberately rather than inherit. And who is accountable when the system works exactly as specified but not the way the owner pictured, which is better settled as a written acceptance criterion than discovered at closeout.

The gray areas, by system

The gaps a document set leaves are not random. They collect where the low voltage scope meets the trade that owns the surface, the opening, or the network. A specification can describe a complete system and still never say who drills the hole, who furnishes the lock, or whose switch the camera lands on.

Each item below is a question worth asking on a job that carries the system. If the documents answer it, nothing is needed. If they do not, it becomes a matrix row, an assumption, an allowance, or an exclusion. Part 6's likely-to-bite test decides how hard to push on the ones that are only theoretically possible.

Structured cabling

Cable is the cheap part. The gaps are in the building it passes through, and most of them are work another trade does until somebody says otherwise.

• Firestopping. A code obligation on every rated wall and floor the cable crosses. The detail is usually drawn and the responsibility usually is not.
• Core drilling and scanning. Commonly a subcontracted line rather than an exclusion. On a post-tension slab, scanning before coring is not optional.
• Pathway. Cable above an accessible ceiling, and cable in a wall, in conduit, or underground, are different numbers. A riser with no pathway detail needs the assumption stated.
• Ceiling tile. Name who replaces a tile damaged during installation.
• Grounding and bonding. Racks, ladder rack, and the telecom busbar back to the building electrode system. Often shown, almost never assigned.
• Patching and painting. Rarely in the scope and rarely excluded, which is how it goes unpriced.
• Rack and cabinet assembly. Receiving, assembling, and anchoring is labor whether or not the company bought the enclosure.
• Labeling. Whether the company sets the scheme or follows the owner's, and whether relabeling existing cable is included.
• Abandoned cable. A code obligation somebody owns. On a retrofit it is often the largest unplanned labor item.

Access control

A door is three trades deep. The hardware supplier furnishes it, the door installer prepares and hangs it, and the low voltage contractor connects it. The head end splits again between the field devices and the server work the owner's IT group may intend to keep.

• Door hardware. Locks, strikes, closers, power transfers, and electrified mortise sets. The hardware schedule names the hardware and often does not say who installs or wires it.
• Door preparation. Belongs to whoever furnishes the door on new work. Mortising an existing door is hours per opening.
• Fire alarm interface. Who furnishes the release, who programs each side, and who stands for the test. The clearest case for a partial mark.
• Request-to-exit. Sometimes part of the hardware, sometimes a separate sensor. The life-safety requirement does not care which.
• Operators. Usually furnished by others. The sequence of operation still has to be coordinated.
• Door position contacts. Furnished with the hardware or by the low voltage contractor. A concealed contact in an existing frame is not a surface contact.
• Servers and software. Whether scope includes provisioning, the operating system, the database, and hardening, or stops at the field devices and the controller.
• Credentials. Quantity and format, who programs the database, and whether existing cardholders are enrolled.
• Existing head end. Licensing for the added doors, version compatibility, and whether the manufacturer will still support an addition.

Video surveillance

The camera is the least expensive part of putting a camera up. The gaps sit on the structure it mounts to, and on the network and storage it depends on.

• Mounting and backboxes. Including reinforcement where a surface will not carry the camera.
• Poles, masts, and parapets. Foundations, and a stamped detail where one is required.
• The camera network. A dedicated network the company furnishes, or the owner's. If the owner's, who confirms the power budget and the uplink capacity.
• Analytics. Licensed per camera or per server, and configured as its own labor.
• View and layout. Aiming, focus, and field of view. The step owners most often assume is included.
• Monitors and workstations. Supply, mounting, and the video wall where there is one.
• Reused cameras. Whether they are in scope, and whether the company warrants devices it did not supply.

Retention deserves its own care. A proposal promising thirty days of recorded video without stating what that figure depends on is a promise the company cannot keep, because retention is a function of resolution, frame rate, compression, scene complexity, and whether recording is continuous or motion-based. A parking lot in wind produces far more motion than a storage room. State the basis:

Storage is sized for 30 days of retention based on 12 cameras at 4 MP, 15 frames per second, H.265 compression, continuous recording, and an average bitrate of 4 Mbps per camera. Actual retention varies with scene content and motion. Retention shortfalls caused by scene conditions or by changes to camera settings after commissioning are not included.

The arithmetic behind a basis like that is on the calculators.

Fiber, inside plant

A specification will call for a fiber backbone, show a line between two closets, and leave the decisions that set the price open.

• Strand count and type. Singlemode, multimode, or both, and how many strands. The riser line specifies neither.
• Termination. The largest cost variable: field connectors, fusion-spliced pigtails, or pre-terminated trunks. Specifications often name none of them.
• Enclosures and splice trays. Counted from the termination method, so the two are one decision.
• Rack units. A full elevation turns an enclosure that will not fit into a change order.
• Jumpers. The correct type, length, and connector, and as often forgotten as copper patch cords.
• Optics. Almost always the owner's IT group, unless a silent specification leaves them on the cabling contractor.

Testing is its own decision. Tier 1 insertion loss testing and Tier 2 OTDR traces are different equipment, different hours, and different deliverables. A specification that says only "test all fibers" has not chosen. State the tier, the wavelengths, whether testing is bidirectional, and the report format.

The entrance facility is the boundary that matters most. Where the building fiber ends and the carrier or outside plant work begins is one point, and it is worth naming as precisely as the fire alarm interface.

Fiber, outside plant

Outside plant is a different trade. Those crews trench, bore, and pothole. The exposure is struck utilities, traffic control, right-of-way and environmental permits, excavation safety rules, and insurance written for a different risk. The equipment sits outside what most low voltage shops own.

The first decision is whether the company is performing the work at all. For a shop that does not, the honest answers are a subcontracted line, marked S and priced complete, or an exclusion naming who carries it. Absorbing it to stay competitive is how a fiber job becomes a restoration dispute.

Where it is in scope, state the excavation and restoration, not just the cable:

• Method. Boring or trenching, because rock changes the number.
• Backfill. Including compaction testing where the jurisdiction requires it.
• Restoration. Landscaping, asphalt, and concrete. Often a larger number than the fiber.
• Vaults and handholes. Placement depends on a civil drawing that may not exist at bid time.
• Permits and right-of-way. With the lead time. An unpriced permit is a cost. An unscheduled permit is a delay.
• Locates. Who orders them.

Make the scope govern

A proposal can contain the best scope statements in the trade and still provide no protection, and this is the failure that surprises people.

The common sequence: the proposal is written carefully, the bid is won, and the general contractor issues a subcontract describing the work as all labor and material required by the plans and specifications. The proposal is not attached, not referenced, and not incorporated. The exclusions are, at that point, a document in the company's own files with no contractual effect.

Three things prevent it.

The proposal has to be referenced and attached as an exhibit to the subcontract, by proposal number and revision date. Part 6 covered version control for exactly this reason, and the revision incorporated has to be the one the company intends.

The subcontract has to state the order of precedence, with the proposal's scope ranking above the plans and specifications where they conflict. Without it, the general rule of interpretation favors the contract documents, which means the specification governs and the exclusions lose.

The review has to happen before signing. A subcontract that omits the proposal is usually a form rather than a trap, and asking for the proposal to be attached and the precedence language added is a normal request made routinely by trades that have been burned once. The leverage to ask exists only before signature.

This is the point where a proposal stops being an estimating document and becomes a contract exhibit. The incorporation and precedence language is worth having an attorney draft once, because it is reused on every job.

An exclusion, or a priced line

An exclusion is a refusal. A separately priced line is an offer.

On an item the company could perform and the owner may well want, the offer is worth more. It keeps the scope, gets paid for it, and still closes the opening. It is the price-the-edge tactic from part 4, applied to a boundary rather than to an item a competitor missed.

Firestopping is the clearest case. Excluded, it becomes a gap the general contractor fills from another trade, and the company has handed away work it was equipped to do, on penetrations it created. Priced as a line, it is work the company controls, on its own schedule, at its own margin. The exclusion costs nothing to write and costs the revenue every time.

The library behind all of it

Part 5 introduced the scope library. Under a deadline nobody writes a careful clause from scratch, so what exists to be selected from decides the quality of the proposal.

It has two parts, matching the two instruments. The first is a checklist of questions by system: the items a system requires that documents routinely fail to assign. It is not a pre-built matrix, because the matrix belongs to the job. It is what an estimator reads the specification against to find out which rows this job needs. The second is the selectable prose statements, organized by system and then by category, which is also where the sentence behind every P lives.

A statement earns its place by having been needed. The best source of library content is the project that went wrong, and the fix belongs in the library the same week, while the reason is still clear. Keep the attorney-reviewed language, meaning terms, warranty, and the precedence clause, in a locked section that estimators select but do not edit.

Bringing it together

The four tools from part 4 decide what to say. This post is about saying it in a way that still works later.

The matrix is built for the job from the systems in the bid and the gaps the documents leave, with no row left blank and a sentence behind every partial mark. Gaps a mark cannot answer become an allowance, an assumption, or an exclusion, and none of them become silence. The project statements then take inclusions, assumptions, and exclusions in that order, each written with what, by whom, and where relevant what happens if the condition is not met. Demarcation statements, physical and functional, settle where responsibility ends, which is what most disputes are actually about. And the proposal is incorporated into the subcontract by number and revision, ranking above the plans and specifications where they conflict, because without that the rest of it has no effect.

Next in this series: following up and the qualification period.

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

Related on this site

• Estimating low voltage work, part 6: writing the proposal
• Estimating low voltage work, part 4: handling the questions
• Calculators