Bid tabulation
A bid tabulation, or bid tab, is the table that sets every bid for a package side by side so their prices and scope can be read against each other.
Also written as bid tab, bid tab sheet, bid tabulation sheet.
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Reviewed by Eric Collin · President and Founder of Firmo Construction, 20+ years in preconstruction and bid evaluation
The layout is near-universal: bidders across the top, one column each; the scope down the left; totals along the bottom. Exclusions, qualifications, and any alternates sit alongside, because a total means little without them.
A raw bid tab and a leveled one look almost identical and mean very different things. The raw tab records what was submitted. The leveled tab records what those bids mean once each has been adjusted onto a common scope. Reading the first as though it were the second is the most common way a bidder gets awarded on a comparison that was never fair — the low column is low because it covers less.
It is also the record of the decision. When an owner, an auditor, or a disappointed bidder asks why a package went the way it did, the bid tab is the answer, which is why the adjustments behind it need to be written down rather than carried in the estimator's head.
Traditionally it is a spreadsheet, rebuilt from scratch for every package. That is where most of the hours in leveling actually go.
A useful column to carry alongside the totals is $/SF. It turns each bid into a figure that can be checked against past projects, which is often how a bidder who has misread the scope gets spotted before the adjustments are even finished.
- Bid leveling vs bid tabulation
What is the difference between bid leveling and bid tabulation?
- Bid leveling
Bid leveling is the process of adjusting subcontractor bids onto a common scope so their prices can be compared like for like.
- Apples-to-apples comparison
An apples-to-apples comparison is one where every bid covers the same scope, so the prices differ only by what the bidders charge rather than by what they included.
- Qualifications
Qualifications are the conditions and assumptions a bidder attaches to its price — the circumstances under which that number holds.
- Cost per square foot
Cost per square foot, written $/SF, is a price divided by the building area it covers, used to compare projects and bids of different sizes.
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