Bid form
The bid form is the document a bidder must complete and sign to submit its price, prescribed by the owner so that every bid arrives in the same structure.
Also written as proposal form, form of proposal.
Last updated
Reviewed by Eric Collin · President and Founder of Firmo Construction, 20+ years in preconstruction and bid evaluation
It fixes what the bidder must state: the base bid, each alternate, unit prices, the addenda acknowledged, the time to complete, and any required attachments such as a bid bond or a list of proposed subcontractors.
Its purpose is comparability. A field of bids arriving on the owner's form can be read side by side; a field arriving on each bidder's own letterhead has to be translated before it can be compared, and translation is where errors enter.
On public work a bid form is also a compliance instrument, and departures from it can be fatal. An unsigned form, a missing addendum acknowledgement, or an omitted unit price can render a bid non-responsive regardless of its number, so the apparent low bidder can be set aside for a defect that has nothing to do with price.
Private work is looser, and that looseness is exactly why leveling takes longer there. When bidders answer in their own formats, restructuring five proposals onto one canonical scope is work the bid form would otherwise have done in advance.
- Base bid
The base bid is the price for the work as specified in the contract documents, before any alternates, unit price adjustments, or allowances are applied.
- Addendum
An addendum is a formal change to the bid documents issued by the design team during the bidding period.
- Bid bond
A bid bond is a surety guarantee that a bidder will honor its bid and enter into the contract at that price if the work is awarded to it.
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