Alternate
An alternate is separately priced scope, added to or deducted from the base bid, that lets the owner decide at award whether to include it.
Also written as bid alternate, add alternate, deduct alternate.
Last updated
Reviewed by Eric Collin · President and Founder of Firmo Construction, 20+ years in preconstruction and bid evaluation
An add alternate prices work not in the base bid; a deduct alternate prices removing work that is. Both exist to keep a decision open — usually a budget decision — until bids are in hand and the real cost of the choice is known.
They complicate comparison in a way that is easy to underestimate. The bidder low on base scope is not necessarily low once the alternates the owner intends to accept are added, so the award decision has to be made on the combination actually being bought, not on the base column alone.
The failure worth checking for first is simpler: confirm every bidder priced every alternate, and priced the same one. An alternate left blank, or answered with a number that quietly assumes different scope, produces a comparison that looks complete and is not.
Distinct from value engineering, though the two get conflated — an alternate is a priced option offered as part of the bid, while VE is a proposal to change the design to reduce cost.
- Alternate vs value engineering
What is the difference between an alternate and value engineering?
- Allowance
An allowance is a fixed sum carried in a bid for work that is not yet defined well enough to price, to be reconciled against the actual cost later.
- Unit price
A unit price is a rate per unit of measure — per cubic yard, per linear foot — used for work whose quantity cannot be known when the bid is submitted.
- Value engineering
Value engineering, or VE, is the process of finding lower-cost ways to deliver the same function, usually triggered when a project comes in over budget.
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