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.
Also written as unit prices, unit rate.
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Reviewed by Eric Collin · President and Founder of Firmo Construction, 20+ years in preconstruction and bid evaluation
The standard cases are underground: rock excavation, unsuitable soil removal, dewatering. Nobody knows how much will be encountered, so instead of guessing a total, the bidder gives a rate and the quantity is measured as the work happens.
Because the quantity is unknown, unit prices usually sit outside the bid total. That is what makes them easy to miss and expensive to ignore — a bidder can be lowest on the base number and hold rock excavation rates well above everyone else, and if the site turns out to have rock, the award that looked cheapest is not.
They are compared rate by rate against the other bidders rather than rolled into a single figure, and the comparison is worth weighting by how likely the work actually is. A high rate on something the geotechnical report says will not be encountered is not the same risk as a high rate on something it says will.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
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