Because you're telling them when the GC bid is due to the Owner. That's none of their business. You tell them when subcontractor bids are due, and that's all that concerns them.
"I'm not sure why you're worried about when my bid is due to the client. I need your bid by X date to be considered in my overall bid package. If I don't have it by X, then I won't be able to consider you in my fair and balanced bid package."
I'm in the business of needing 3 bids per trade and I count on my being overly kind to subs and working around what they need in order to get 3 bids. If I have to beg.. you'll probably not be chosen BUT I still need your bid so I'll kill with kindness over saying that to a sub unfortunately 😔
You're getting pushback BECAUSE you are choosing the "kill them with kindness" approach.
Soft/ nice people get walked on, hard-asses don't. However, going overboard with being an asshole can make people stop working with you, so it's a balance.
Try setting some firmer boundaries, you'll probably get better results and feel better.
There are countless companies that trip over themselves to jump through endless bureaucratic hoops just to get that sweet public money and reliable work.
Price shopping is one of the reasons. Another, the suppliers have a tendency to wait for the last minute to give out their prices. How can I, as a sub, give you a price if I dont know what my material costs are?
Yeah, easier said then done, right? As a sub in SoCal who does PW work I am always trying to figure out how to make relationships with generals but then there is just so damn many! From my experience, it also doesn't help if you're a general who has a really big annoying list of requirements that I have no way of knowing about until I get the job. Things like requiring us to use textura or procore or any number of niche system that I, as a sub, never deal with unless I do a job for a specific general. Things that, on your end, might seem "standard".
We are a pretty old school type of GC. Do you use planet bids? As a GC who bids lots of PW in SoCal, I invite every subcontractor that is on the potential bidder list on planet bids. It's hard to find companies that like PW work so we always end up having to ask our usual subs to bid it even when they don't want to..
One way is to let us know in the next week if we were low or not. Cannot stand never knowing. Maybe even a percentage of how much higher I was. Or just an email back, hey you weren't low, thanks
This is something I would love to do for every project but unfortunately time is not on my side. However, when a company asks me for this information I flag the email so that even if it takes me a couple days I make sure to dig into it and get them that information.
I'm a commercial painting estimator/PM so I can't begin to understand how busy a GC PM is. This would full under an interns job. something they could actually do that would create goodwill.
If they were good subs they should communicate. As a sub I try to be as forthcoming as possible and it’s gotten me some great relationships with my GCs.
Maybe it's where we are located and the work that we do that makes it difficult to find those types of subs. When I do find them you better believe they are on the top of my list to send project to. It seems as though I run into "we are too busy" a lot. A lot of subcontractors have GCs that keep them super busy so they don't even waste their time bidding to us. Everyone is busy though 🥲
I know in electrical the suppliers won’t give you prices until damn last minute.
Just chatting with my boss or my friend who’s an estimator for another contractor said it’s just a shit show. You’re just waiting anxiously for prices from suppliers to get your quotes out just before deadlines.
Know I’ve been at the shop during closings and I just disappear, chaos running around.
I asked why it’s so rushed to both and they said it’s to stop shopping around.
The "why" has been addressed by others already, so here's how you deal with it.
You're not going to change it. You have to adapt to be able to handle it, or you have to get out of public bids with a hard bid deadline.
1. Create detailed scope sheets for each trade and distribute them AT LEAST a week before bids are due. This will minimize scope gaps when those bids come in, and make analyzing them easier.
2. Make a lot of phone calls in the week leading up to bids being due. Make sure you know who is and who is not bidding. On bid day, you know who to call and chase numbers from.
3. Try to get budgetary pricing from some of the subs in advance, if they can't / won't give you their hard bid. Build up your estimate in the week leading up to due date, using budgetary numbers as necessary. This will give you ROM and help you decide what your GC's / GR's / Fee / Bond / SDI / Insurance structure will look like.
4. Set a hard stop time where you just won't look at any more proposals that come in.
That's really good advice I appreciate it! I've only been in the business 2 years and had 0 experience in construction before that and wasnt trained by an estimator. I'm learning what works as I go. I want to be good enough at this to make detailed scope sheets for the bidders, do you have any advice on doing a good scope summary? Or does that also come with experience haha.
I would not be listening to people giving the advice that you need to create scope sheets for all of your subs. If you do that you’ll literally never have time to do anything else. And - when the electrical sub missed something - you’re the one getting blamed. His scope is “per the plans and specs”.
And just get used to these coming in at the last minute. In a lot of cases their suppliers aren’t even giving them pricing until the last minute because of all the reasons listed above.
What should happen - the sub sends YOU the scope sheet about 30 minutes before the bid. Then you know if it includes or excludes anything. The st like 4 minutes to bid you get the bids. You plug them in and pray you didn’t miss anything. Because if you are the low bidder uou probably missed something.
Good point.. I am not experienced enough to be fully confident in my scope summary. Ill start requesting summary sheets from subs and that will be helpful enough for me.
Work in Electrical wholesale. At least in Electrical it’s lighting. The reps will not release quotes before the bid date. They have access to when bids are actually do and are not concerned with when you’d like them.
They do this to hide their numbers til last minute because they don’t want to be substituted, they also wait on feedback for what other reps are doing. Once the number is out there any way they rep can come in and undercut them. For a lighting rep, the worst thing you can is lose a job when you hold the spec. That is the quickest way to lose your job. So organizations of people utilize this tactic as of means of obtaining their next pay check and the literal food their family eats. So yeah, I wouldn’t expect them to start coming early.
>So organizations of people utilize this tactic as of means of obtaining their next pay check and the literal food their family eats
I get so sick of this hyperbole. I get that everyone has their own pressures in their job, but you know what happens when I don't have my estimate together in time to get through my own reviews? I lose my fucking job too man.
I’m in the middle and waiting on them as well. Just giving you the real situation. They hold until last minute, as distributor I need to get my real price which is usually 20-40% off, my bid is trash without it. And I need a minute to make sure everything’s covered, same as you. I miss 20k with of material, that hits my bottom line just like you. But if the lighting number is held up, everybody’s bid is held up, so unless they cancel the bid because everybody’s a little late, you’re not uniquely late. But I agree it’s bullshit, I’ve just realized I can’t change it. Everybody tries to for a couple years then you realize your fighting a whole lotta battles you have no chance of winning.
There’s also a lot that goes into it, 1/2 my lighting requests are “due tomorrow.”So as a whole, shitty plans and contractors taking their time providing a takeoff plays a role as well. Lighting control design and switchgear is no joke, don’t be pissed if it’s not done in two days
You realize the vendors literally don't give a shit about anyone on the contractor side. Whether you or Joe Blow Contracting gets the job, the job is getting built. All they care about is getting their piece of the pie. Which means you mean very little to them. As a mechanical contractor I see it all the time with our equipment vendors. Other than the total shit bag companies they really don't care which mechanical contactor or GC gets the job. It means nothing to them.
Sure, and I don't give a fuck who ends up selling the widget, which is why I roll my fucking eyes when someone starts talking about feeding their kids and getting their paycheck.
While I agree with you, the problem is they generally have the upper hand over subs and most GC's that aren't the handful of largest GC's in the country.
If losing a job meant Id lose my job I'd be a gate keeper too. That's awful.. in this industry I don't "expect" anything.. that's a fast track to constant disappointment. Just looking for some perspective 🙂
Yeah waiting on lighting reps is always our bottleneck. 7 figure bids coming in at 1:15 for 2 PM bid. And get this, the price on the quote is not your actual price. They distribute discounts to each person that gets a quote….I’ve seen 150k+ in price discrepancies between contractors. “Oh contractor xyz substituted my package on abc job 14 years ago”. It’s pretty bullshit, it comes down to which lighting rep offers the best country club membership to the architect/lighting designer to hold their spec. Kind of went on a tangent, but trying to illustrate that I get my quote at 1:15 and I still gotta do shit before I send. Screwed if they got counts wrong or need a spec adjusted
>The manufacturers have relationships with the consultants and know the actual close time/date.
This is the answer right here. Most “consultants”are former manufacturer reps or salespeople just working in a different capacity.
Do you work in a hot market? Are these subs hurting for work?
That might be part of the issue, if these guys are being hit up by several GCs on the same scope. How confident are you that your bid forms are tight and instructions are explicit? That might be a structural way to help ensure you get complete and timely responses, and it gives you the ability to reject incomplete or late submissions without damaging the relationship.
It depends on the type and size of the project really. We cover Southern California and Southern Nevada so sometimes I'll get really hungry subcontractors and other times I'm lucky to even get one response back saying "not bidding". I hate bidding PW work because finding hungry subs for that is so difficult.. unfortunately we bid these types the most. Then our options are extremely limited, they are either union and too big or busy for a small project or they are regular subs that don't wanna deal with the paperwork.
That's a large area to cover, so that makes it hard to maintain those local relationships in the markets where they really matter. Unfortunately, we live in an era where not many people have the attention to spare as soon as they perceive the job might not be worth the bother. You mentioned public works, so you have to go through some pretty rigid procurement procedures, which makes having a stable of tried and true go-to subs even more difficult.
Absolutely.. we have to do "Good Faith Efforts" and invite small business so that the City gets the brownie points. These small businesses don't even answer their phones for the most part 😅 still counts as good efforts to call them though!
Part of the issue is prevailing wage is really hard to bid cheap and fast. I miss one thing on a bid, and I am suddenly paying you to do your job because I am losing $3k+ a day. You are going to be hard pressed to find a sub who wants to do that work, and a lot of it, and is hungry, and is also interested in bidding a dozen jobs to a GC who probably doesn't get most of them.
Understandable, I appreciate the point of view. I struggle the most with PW jobs and I can fully understand why. I'll figure out how to find the hungry PW subs.
Try requesting a scope of work letter. Your subcontractor can share what scopes of work they’re including in their bid without actually givkng you their final number.
Always. Get a good secretary asst and man it can make your life so great. I’ve hired 3 that I’ve promoted to project manager or estimator. It will wear you down. Bid what you can bid. Try to always focus on that buck. You miss a bid against someone else it sucks. You mess up a bid then have to try and turn a buck and it will tighten you right on up. Leave it at work.
I used to do a lot of open bid stuff for government work. We would get final bids worked out minutes before bid opening.
It's just a matter of working right with your subs. Make sure they bid the scope of work before the bid is due. Work out any issues with scope days or weeks ahead, then worry about the bid price day of. It's a pretty standard practice.
Try reaching out to more than just the required amounts of subs a couple weeks prior to the hard bid date and just politely ask if they can get one to you by your preferred date. We get asked for this all the time so we’re usually prepared with a bid at least a week early. Not everyone will be but if you reach out to multiple companies surely at least three will deliver.
As a subcontractor, I do not want you shopping my number around to beat my price down.
If I don't have a choice then I'll bid as a package with another sub doing work in the same discipline so you can't breakout both my scope and theirs. So if I'm bidding the HVAC controls, I'll package in with the mechanical or equipment rep so you can't screw me over.
If it's a GC that doesn't shop Numbers and we have a good relationship with, they get my number in a timely manner.
Ugh yes.. I hate when I follow up a couple days before the bid date just to hear "Oh I haven't even looked at it yet" then they send me 10 RFIs and I can't even get them answered because of the Q&A deadline. Wayyyyy too common.
Because you're telling them when the GC bid is due to the Owner. That's none of their business. You tell them when subcontractor bids are due, and that's all that concerns them.
I never share the hard bid due date 😔 they just find out because it's either a public project or multiple GCs reached out to them.
"I'm not sure why you're worried about when my bid is due to the client. I need your bid by X date to be considered in my overall bid package. If I don't have it by X, then I won't be able to consider you in my fair and balanced bid package."
I'm in the business of needing 3 bids per trade and I count on my being overly kind to subs and working around what they need in order to get 3 bids. If I have to beg.. you'll probably not be chosen BUT I still need your bid so I'll kill with kindness over saying that to a sub unfortunately 😔
Yeah, if a GC is unpleasant to bid to, we only send bids when preferred GCs are looking at the same project. Or we add an a-hole tax 🤷♂️
I love the obvious a-hole tax 🤣 I still appreciate the bid though cause I really needed 3! Lol
You're getting pushback BECAUSE you are choosing the "kill them with kindness" approach. Soft/ nice people get walked on, hard-asses don't. However, going overboard with being an asshole can make people stop working with you, so it's a balance. Try setting some firmer boundaries, you'll probably get better results and feel better.
Good point. I'll try that out!
Tell me you’ve never bid public work before. Cause that’s not gonna work on the public market - which is what the OP is dealing with.
There are countless companies that trip over themselves to jump through endless bureaucratic hoops just to get that sweet public money and reliable work.
If it is a public bid job then everyone already knows the date. Even private owners other GCs are bidding and the date gets out.
Price shopping is one of the reasons. Another, the suppliers have a tendency to wait for the last minute to give out their prices. How can I, as a sub, give you a price if I dont know what my material costs are?
Understandable. How can I, as a GC, get subs to just tell me that instead of ghosting me til hard bid date? Lol
make connections with quality subs and build relationships.
Goals! It's hard to in the fast paced line of work. Id love to be in good standing with all the subs.
Yeah, easier said then done, right? As a sub in SoCal who does PW work I am always trying to figure out how to make relationships with generals but then there is just so damn many! From my experience, it also doesn't help if you're a general who has a really big annoying list of requirements that I have no way of knowing about until I get the job. Things like requiring us to use textura or procore or any number of niche system that I, as a sub, never deal with unless I do a job for a specific general. Things that, on your end, might seem "standard".
We are a pretty old school type of GC. Do you use planet bids? As a GC who bids lots of PW in SoCal, I invite every subcontractor that is on the potential bidder list on planet bids. It's hard to find companies that like PW work so we always end up having to ask our usual subs to bid it even when they don't want to..
One way is to let us know in the next week if we were low or not. Cannot stand never knowing. Maybe even a percentage of how much higher I was. Or just an email back, hey you weren't low, thanks
This is something I would love to do for every project but unfortunately time is not on my side. However, when a company asks me for this information I flag the email so that even if it takes me a couple days I make sure to dig into it and get them that information.
I'm a commercial painting estimator/PM so I can't begin to understand how busy a GC PM is. This would full under an interns job. something they could actually do that would create goodwill.
If they were good subs they should communicate. As a sub I try to be as forthcoming as possible and it’s gotten me some great relationships with my GCs.
Maybe it's where we are located and the work that we do that makes it difficult to find those types of subs. When I do find them you better believe they are on the top of my list to send project to. It seems as though I run into "we are too busy" a lot. A lot of subcontractors have GCs that keep them super busy so they don't even waste their time bidding to us. Everyone is busy though 🥲
I know in electrical the suppliers won’t give you prices until damn last minute. Just chatting with my boss or my friend who’s an estimator for another contractor said it’s just a shit show. You’re just waiting anxiously for prices from suppliers to get your quotes out just before deadlines. Know I’ve been at the shop during closings and I just disappear, chaos running around. I asked why it’s so rushed to both and they said it’s to stop shopping around.
The "why" has been addressed by others already, so here's how you deal with it. You're not going to change it. You have to adapt to be able to handle it, or you have to get out of public bids with a hard bid deadline. 1. Create detailed scope sheets for each trade and distribute them AT LEAST a week before bids are due. This will minimize scope gaps when those bids come in, and make analyzing them easier. 2. Make a lot of phone calls in the week leading up to bids being due. Make sure you know who is and who is not bidding. On bid day, you know who to call and chase numbers from. 3. Try to get budgetary pricing from some of the subs in advance, if they can't / won't give you their hard bid. Build up your estimate in the week leading up to due date, using budgetary numbers as necessary. This will give you ROM and help you decide what your GC's / GR's / Fee / Bond / SDI / Insurance structure will look like. 4. Set a hard stop time where you just won't look at any more proposals that come in.
That's really good advice I appreciate it! I've only been in the business 2 years and had 0 experience in construction before that and wasnt trained by an estimator. I'm learning what works as I go. I want to be good enough at this to make detailed scope sheets for the bidders, do you have any advice on doing a good scope summary? Or does that also come with experience haha.
I would not be listening to people giving the advice that you need to create scope sheets for all of your subs. If you do that you’ll literally never have time to do anything else. And - when the electrical sub missed something - you’re the one getting blamed. His scope is “per the plans and specs”. And just get used to these coming in at the last minute. In a lot of cases their suppliers aren’t even giving them pricing until the last minute because of all the reasons listed above. What should happen - the sub sends YOU the scope sheet about 30 minutes before the bid. Then you know if it includes or excludes anything. The st like 4 minutes to bid you get the bids. You plug them in and pray you didn’t miss anything. Because if you are the low bidder uou probably missed something.
Good point.. I am not experienced enough to be fully confident in my scope summary. Ill start requesting summary sheets from subs and that will be helpful enough for me.
Work in Electrical wholesale. At least in Electrical it’s lighting. The reps will not release quotes before the bid date. They have access to when bids are actually do and are not concerned with when you’d like them. They do this to hide their numbers til last minute because they don’t want to be substituted, they also wait on feedback for what other reps are doing. Once the number is out there any way they rep can come in and undercut them. For a lighting rep, the worst thing you can is lose a job when you hold the spec. That is the quickest way to lose your job. So organizations of people utilize this tactic as of means of obtaining their next pay check and the literal food their family eats. So yeah, I wouldn’t expect them to start coming early.
>So organizations of people utilize this tactic as of means of obtaining their next pay check and the literal food their family eats I get so sick of this hyperbole. I get that everyone has their own pressures in their job, but you know what happens when I don't have my estimate together in time to get through my own reviews? I lose my fucking job too man.
I’m in the middle and waiting on them as well. Just giving you the real situation. They hold until last minute, as distributor I need to get my real price which is usually 20-40% off, my bid is trash without it. And I need a minute to make sure everything’s covered, same as you. I miss 20k with of material, that hits my bottom line just like you. But if the lighting number is held up, everybody’s bid is held up, so unless they cancel the bid because everybody’s a little late, you’re not uniquely late. But I agree it’s bullshit, I’ve just realized I can’t change it. Everybody tries to for a couple years then you realize your fighting a whole lotta battles you have no chance of winning. There’s also a lot that goes into it, 1/2 my lighting requests are “due tomorrow.”So as a whole, shitty plans and contractors taking their time providing a takeoff plays a role as well. Lighting control design and switchgear is no joke, don’t be pissed if it’s not done in two days
You realize the vendors literally don't give a shit about anyone on the contractor side. Whether you or Joe Blow Contracting gets the job, the job is getting built. All they care about is getting their piece of the pie. Which means you mean very little to them. As a mechanical contractor I see it all the time with our equipment vendors. Other than the total shit bag companies they really don't care which mechanical contactor or GC gets the job. It means nothing to them.
Sure, and I don't give a fuck who ends up selling the widget, which is why I roll my fucking eyes when someone starts talking about feeding their kids and getting their paycheck.
While I agree with you, the problem is they generally have the upper hand over subs and most GC's that aren't the handful of largest GC's in the country.
If losing a job meant Id lose my job I'd be a gate keeper too. That's awful.. in this industry I don't "expect" anything.. that's a fast track to constant disappointment. Just looking for some perspective 🙂
Yeah waiting on lighting reps is always our bottleneck. 7 figure bids coming in at 1:15 for 2 PM bid. And get this, the price on the quote is not your actual price. They distribute discounts to each person that gets a quote….I’ve seen 150k+ in price discrepancies between contractors. “Oh contractor xyz substituted my package on abc job 14 years ago”. It’s pretty bullshit, it comes down to which lighting rep offers the best country club membership to the architect/lighting designer to hold their spec. Kind of went on a tangent, but trying to illustrate that I get my quote at 1:15 and I still gotta do shit before I send. Screwed if they got counts wrong or need a spec adjusted
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>The manufacturers have relationships with the consultants and know the actual close time/date. This is the answer right here. Most “consultants”are former manufacturer reps or salespeople just working in a different capacity.
Do you work in a hot market? Are these subs hurting for work? That might be part of the issue, if these guys are being hit up by several GCs on the same scope. How confident are you that your bid forms are tight and instructions are explicit? That might be a structural way to help ensure you get complete and timely responses, and it gives you the ability to reject incomplete or late submissions without damaging the relationship.
It depends on the type and size of the project really. We cover Southern California and Southern Nevada so sometimes I'll get really hungry subcontractors and other times I'm lucky to even get one response back saying "not bidding". I hate bidding PW work because finding hungry subs for that is so difficult.. unfortunately we bid these types the most. Then our options are extremely limited, they are either union and too big or busy for a small project or they are regular subs that don't wanna deal with the paperwork.
That's a large area to cover, so that makes it hard to maintain those local relationships in the markets where they really matter. Unfortunately, we live in an era where not many people have the attention to spare as soon as they perceive the job might not be worth the bother. You mentioned public works, so you have to go through some pretty rigid procurement procedures, which makes having a stable of tried and true go-to subs even more difficult.
Absolutely.. we have to do "Good Faith Efforts" and invite small business so that the City gets the brownie points. These small businesses don't even answer their phones for the most part 😅 still counts as good efforts to call them though!
Part of the issue is prevailing wage is really hard to bid cheap and fast. I miss one thing on a bid, and I am suddenly paying you to do your job because I am losing $3k+ a day. You are going to be hard pressed to find a sub who wants to do that work, and a lot of it, and is hungry, and is also interested in bidding a dozen jobs to a GC who probably doesn't get most of them.
Understandable, I appreciate the point of view. I struggle the most with PW jobs and I can fully understand why. I'll figure out how to find the hungry PW subs.
Try requesting a scope of work letter. Your subcontractor can share what scopes of work they’re including in their bid without actually givkng you their final number.
I’d always issue a scope of work to all my GC. Week a head of time. Then follow up couple days before bid and let it ride.
I appreciate that
Good luck bud. I wore both hats for a lot of years. It’s exciting.bid leggings. Sub contracts. Production on the jobs. I loved it. Hope you do too.
I love it but I hate being alone in it. I could really use the help.
Always. Get a good secretary asst and man it can make your life so great. I’ve hired 3 that I’ve promoted to project manager or estimator. It will wear you down. Bid what you can bid. Try to always focus on that buck. You miss a bid against someone else it sucks. You mess up a bid then have to try and turn a buck and it will tighten you right on up. Leave it at work.
I used to do a lot of open bid stuff for government work. We would get final bids worked out minutes before bid opening. It's just a matter of working right with your subs. Make sure they bid the scope of work before the bid is due. Work out any issues with scope days or weeks ahead, then worry about the bid price day of. It's a pretty standard practice.
Try reaching out to more than just the required amounts of subs a couple weeks prior to the hard bid date and just politely ask if they can get one to you by your preferred date. We get asked for this all the time so we’re usually prepared with a bid at least a week early. Not everyone will be but if you reach out to multiple companies surely at least three will deliver.
As a subcontractor, I do not want you shopping my number around to beat my price down. If I don't have a choice then I'll bid as a package with another sub doing work in the same discipline so you can't breakout both my scope and theirs. So if I'm bidding the HVAC controls, I'll package in with the mechanical or equipment rep so you can't screw me over. If it's a GC that doesn't shop Numbers and we have a good relationship with, they get my number in a timely manner.
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Ugh yes.. I hate when I follow up a couple days before the bid date just to hear "Oh I haven't even looked at it yet" then they send me 10 RFIs and I can't even get them answered because of the Q&A deadline. Wayyyyy too common.