Estimating low voltage work, part 8: following up and the qualification period

Part 7 finished the proposal. This post covers the weeks after it goes out, which most contractors treat as dead time and which are not.

Two things happen in those weeks. The bid gets leveled against other bids, and a short list gets qualified. A company that submits and then waits for a phone call will miss both.

What this post covers

• The timeline already in the documents. The dates the bid package gives, and what to do when it gives none.
• The follow-up. When to send it, who receives it, and the four things it asks.
• The intent to award. Why it has to be watched for rather than waited on.
• The qualification period. The package, the job-specific items that are not in a prequalification package, and the meeting.
• The subcontract. Payment terms, risk terms, and reconciling the agreement against the proposal before signature.

The dates are usually already there

A bid package normally carries several dates past the bid date: the bid opening, an evaluation period, an anticipated award date, a notice to proceed, and a substantial completion date. Public work almost always publishes them. Private invited work often does not.

Those dates belong in the bid record alongside the question log, because they set every date that follows. An anticipated award six weeks out means material quotes have to hold that long, and a quote that expires before award is a price the company no longer has.

When no timeline is given, the default is a follow-up near the end of the second week. Two weeks is long enough that bids have been leveled and the recipient has something to say. It is short enough that the bid is still current and the company is still in mind. A follow-up on day three has nothing to ask about, and one at week six arrives after the decision.

The follow-up

It goes to whoever invited the bid, which is the same person the proposal was addressed to. On a job bid to both a general contractor and an electrical contractor, that is two separate follow-ups, each to its own recipient.

It asks four things, and they are worth sending in this order:

• Thanks for the opportunity to bid. Brief, and genuine. A company that only ever makes contact to ask for something is remembered that way.
• Whether there were any questions or clarifications regarding the proposal. This is the real purpose of the message. It invites the recipient to raise a scope misunderstanding at the only point where correcting it is free. A reader who thought an exclusion meant something else will often say so when asked directly, and will not volunteer it otherwise.
• When they plan to award, if no timeline was given. A neutral question about schedule, not a question about whether the company won.
• Whether they have any input on what the company could do better next time. The most valuable question in the message, and the one most contractors never ask.

That last question gets answered more often than it should, because answering it costs the recipient nothing and most people are willing to be helpful when there is nothing at stake. The answers are specific and useful: the number was twelve percent high, the proposal did not carry an item everyone else carried, the submittal format did not match what the specification asked for, the bond was missing. For a newer shop that is the only market feedback available, and it is free.

The message is short. One screen, no pressure, no second message a few days later. It does not ask whether the company got the job.

Thank you for the opportunity to bid the Woods Building Products project. We appreciate being included.

Were there any questions or clarifications regarding our proposal? We are glad to walk through any part of the scope.

If a timeline has been set, when do you anticipate awarding?

Whether or not this one goes our way, any feedback on what we could do better next time would be welcome.

Follow-ups belong on a schedule rather than in memory. A bid log with the submission date, the anticipated award date, and the follow-up date is enough. If there is no response, one further follow-up around week four or five is reasonable, and after that the bid moves to a closed state in the log rather than staying open indefinitely.

A bid that goes quiet for months and then awards is a different problem. Material quotes have expired, labor rates may have changed, and the project quotes behind the number have to be re-verified before the contract is signed rather than after.

The intent to award has to be watched for

Before final award, most projects of any size issue an intent to award. It is typically posted to everyone in the plan room, and it names which contractors were selected to move into qualification.

Nobody is obligated to call. Sometimes the general contractor reaches out directly and sometimes nothing arrives at all, because the notice was posted and posting it was the notification. The consequence of missing it is the worst one available in the whole bid process: the company made final selection, did not respond, and the work went to somebody else. From the other side it looks like a contractor who could not be reached, and that is how it gets remembered the next time bids go out.

So the plan room gets checked on a schedule for every open bid, in the same way RFI answers and addenda get checked before the bid goes out. Notices arrive the same way RFI answers do, which is to say to everyone at once, with no individual message. Whatever account received the bid invitation is the account that receives the notice, and if that is a shared or rarely checked inbox, that is a problem worth fixing before it costs a project.

Two other things are worth knowing about the notice. It announces selection for qualification, not a contract, and nothing is awarded until a contract is signed. And on public work the bid tabulation is generally published with it, which means the company can see where its number landed against the field. That belongs in the bid log. One bid twenty percent off the low number is an estimating error worth finding. A consistent eight percent above the field is a labor rate, an overhead rate, or a margin decision, and it is a different conversation.

When the company is not on the notice, the follow-up question about what to do better next time becomes the one that matters, and it is worth asking again now that there is an answer to give.

The qualification period

Between the intent to award and the contract, most projects run a qualification period. Smaller jobs skip it. Most contracts of any size have one.

It is a condensed process, and it moves on the other party's deadlines rather than the contractor's. A company that is still gathering certificates, certifications, and submittals when the request arrives spends the entire window scrambling, and the documents that take the longest to produce are the ones the request asks for. Everything that can be ready in advance should already be ready before the company bids, not after it wins.

From the other side of the table it exists to verify that the selected contractor can actually perform the work and carries what the contract requires. That part is administrative. The part that matters more to the contractor is the part nobody announces: this is the only scheduled opportunity to sit down and walk through the proposal with the people who will administer the contract, and confirm that everyone is reading it the same way.

The package is mostly already built

Most of what gets requested is the same material as a prequalification package, reissued current and tailored to the job:

• Licenses. State and local, with the classification that covers the work being awarded rather than the work the company usually does.
• Insurance. Certificates showing the limits and the endorsements the contract requires, which commonly include additional insured, waiver of subrogation, and primary and non-contributory wording. The endorsements are where this goes wrong, because a certificate with correct limits and missing endorsements gets rejected.
• Bonding. Payment and performance bonds where required, at the rate that was carried in the bid rather than the rate discovered afterward.
• Safety documentation. Written programs, the EMR letter, training records, and the project job hazard analysis.
• Financial information. Where the contract or the surety requires it.
• References and project history, selected to resemble the job being awarded.

A company that assembled this before it started bidding spends an hour here. A company that did not spends the qualification window chasing documents instead of reviewing the contract, which is the one thing in this period that actually required attention.

The job-specific items are what make it different

These are the items a prequalification package does not contain, and they are the ones with lead times:

• The submittal package. Spec sheets and cut sheets for the major components, in the format, quantity, and organization the specification names. A submittal rejected on format costs a review cycle, and review cycles are measured in weeks.
• Engineered design, where it is required. Stamped drawings carry both a lead time and a cost, and both have to have been in the bid. This is the item that most often reveals that an engineering allowance was never carried.
• Certification verification. Manufacturer certifications for the systems being installed, current, and in the names of the technicians who will be on the job rather than in the company's name.
• Resume review. Resumes for the people actually assigned. Submitting a lead technician's resume and then sending someone else is a commitment the contractor made and broke in the first week.
• A schedule. Durations for the company's own scope, built from the labor budget and tied to the schedule above it. It is a best estimate at bid time, and the project manager updates it after award.

Lead times are the reason this section matters. Qualification periods are short, often two weeks, and a stamped design or a full manufacturer submittal does not fit in two weeks unless it was started the day the notice arrived. That is the practical argument for watching the plan room. The notice is not just the signal that the company made the short list. It is the start of the clock on every item above, and a notice found three days late is three days gone from a window that had ten.

Walk the proposal line by line

The qualification meeting is the one chance to make the proposal mean the same thing to both parties while that still costs nothing.

What goes into the room is the proposal at its current revision, the scope inclusion and exclusion matrix, the project assumptions and exclusions, and the question log. The matrix is the agenda. Every partial, by-others, and subcontracted mark gets read out loud and confirmed against who the other party believes is carrying it, because a partial mark only works if both sides agree where the split falls. Every assumption gets confirmed or converted into a priced line. Any exclusion the reader had not noticed gets noticed here, in a room, instead of in month four with a crew on site.

Two things keep the meeting from evaporating. Anything agreed gets written and sent afterward as a confirmation, because an agreement reached verbally and never recorded is not an agreement. And anything that changes the scope or the number becomes a proposal revision with a new revision number, under the same version control the proposal already uses. This is also where scope gets added casually. A request to go ahead and include something is a revision with a price, not a nod across a table.

The subcontract

The subcontract usually arrives during qualification, and that is the last point at which its terms are negotiable. After signature there is nothing to negotiate with.

The terms worth reading closely divide into two groups. The first is about getting paid.

• Payment timing, and whether the clause is pay-when-paid or pay-if-paid. Pay-when-paid delays payment until the general contractor is paid. Pay-if-paid can eliminate the obligation entirely if the owner never pays. Enforceability varies significantly by state, and the distinction is worth understanding before signing either one.
• Retainage. The percentage, whether it reduces at substantial completion, and what actually triggers release. Ten percent held until the owner closes out a project the company finished in month three is a real cost.
• The billing cycle. The invoice cutoff date, the schedule of values format, the lien waiver requirements, and what documentation has to accompany a pay application for it to be accepted rather than returned.
• Stored materials. Whether equipment delivered and not yet installed can be billed. On a job with a large head end buy, this is the difference between financing the owner's equipment and not.
• The change order process. Who is authorized to direct changes, in what form, within what response time, and whether work is required to proceed before a change order is signed. A contract that directs work to proceed while payment waits on approval is a cash flow problem with a schedule attached to it.
• Notice periods for delay, impact, and claims. These are short and strictly enforced, and missing one generally waives the claim regardless of its merit.

The second group is about carrying risk that belongs to somebody else.

• Indemnification, and how broadly it is written. An indemnity covering claims arising from the work is ordinary. One covering claims arising from the project is not.
• Consequential damages. Whether they are waived mutually, or at all.
• Liquidated damages, and whether a low voltage subcontractor can be assessed for a delay caused by the trades ahead of it. Low voltage work sits at the end of the schedule and absorbs every delay above it, which makes this clause and the delay notice provision the same conversation.
• Termination for convenience, and what gets paid when it is exercised. Costs incurred, demobilization, and restocking charges on non-returnable material.
• Warranty duration, and the date it starts. A one-year warranty starting at substantial completion of the entire project rather than of the company's own scope can mean many months of unpaid service before the warranty period even begins.
• Flow-down clauses. A subcontract commonly incorporates the prime contract and binds the subcontractor to obligations in a document the subcontractor has never read. Ask for the prime contract. A refusal is itself information.

Reconcile the agreement against the proposal

Separately from the terms, the subcontract has to be read against what the company actually bid. These are the recurring discrepancies:

• The proposal has to be attached and incorporated by number and revision, and it has to rank above the plans and specifications where they conflict. Without that clause, everything written in parts 6 and 7 is decoration.
• The scope exhibit is frequently a summary the general contractor retyped rather than the proposal itself. It gets read word for word against the proposal, because a retyped scope reliably drops exclusions and rarely drops inclusions.
• The contract amount has to match the proposal revision being accepted, including exactly the alternates actually taken and no others.
• Dates. A substantial completion date or a milestone that was not in the bid documents is a new condition, not a formality.
• Specification sections listed in the subcontract that were not in the bid set. Each one is scope the company did not price.

When a term cannot be moved, there are two honest responses: price the risk, or decline the work. A general contractor who will not negotiate pay-if-paid is describing the company's future cash flow accurately, and that is useful information rather than an insult. A contract whose terms cannot be met is a project that should not be signed, and walking away during qualification costs a bid. Walking away in month five costs considerably more.

Bringing it together

The work after submission is mostly discipline rather than skill.

The dates in the bid documents go into the bid log, and where there are none, the follow-up goes out near the end of the second week to whoever invited the bid. It thanks them, asks whether anything in the proposal needs clarifying, asks when award is planned, and asks what the company could do better. The plan room gets checked on a schedule, because the intent to award is frequently posted rather than sent, and a missed notice reads as a contractor who reached final selection and then could not be reached.

Qualification moves fast and on somebody else's deadlines, so it is answered out of a package that was built before bidding, with the job-specific items started the day the notice arrives because their lead times do not fit the window. The meeting is spent walking the matrix line by line until both parties are reading the proposal the same way, and anything agreed there is confirmed in writing and carried into a numbered revision.

Then the subcontract is read twice: once for the payment and risk terms, which are negotiable exactly once, and once against the proposal, to confirm that the document being signed is the one the company priced.

Next in this series: assembling a submittal package.

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 7: inclusions and exclusions
• Starting a low voltage business, part 10: assembling your prequalification package
• Calculators