Addendum
An addendum is a formal change to the bid documents issued by the design team during the bidding period.
Also written as addenda, bid addendum.
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Reviewed by Eric Collin · President and Founder of Firmo Construction, 20+ years in preconstruction and bid evaluation
Addenda add, remove, or clarify scope, answer bidder questions, and correct errors found after the documents went out. They become part of the contract documents, so the scope being bid is the original drawings and specifications as modified by every addendum issued.
Bidders are normally required to acknowledge each one by number on their proposal, and that acknowledgement is the thing to check before comparing anything. A bid that does not list the final addendum may have been priced against superseded documents — the number is real, but it is answering a different question than the other bids.
This is a routine source of scope gaps, and an easy one to miss precisely because it is administrative. An addendum issued late in the bid period, adding scope, acknowledged by three bidders out of five, produces two prices that are lower for a reason that has nothing to do with how competitive they are.
- Scope gap
A scope gap is work required by the project that no bidder included in its price, because every bidder assumed someone else was carrying it.
- Scope of work
A scope of work is the written definition of what a package or contract covers — the work a bidder is being asked to price.
- Bid package
A bid package is the bundle of scope issued to subcontractors as a single unit for pricing, usually corresponding to one trade.
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