Nine Days to Bid: Sod Volatility, a Thin Competitor, and a Promise After Award
Your company is one of five invited to bid a landscape package for a 96-unit apartment project in Davenport. The general contractor gives you nine calendar days and issues plans with a plant schedule, a sod plan of 28,000 sq ft of 'Floratam', 4,600 sq ft of beds mulched to 3 inches, 46 trees in 25-gallon containers, 320 shrubs in 3-gallon containers, and 1,150 linear feet of 4-inch concrete landscape edging. Irrigation is not in your scope; a separate contractor holds it. Your takeoff gives material cost of $41,600 at current prices, but pallet sod prices have moved twice in the last quarter. Labor is estimated at 240 man-hours at a loaded $28/hr. Equipment rental and hauling come to $2,400. You want a 5% contingency, 12% overhead, and 10% profit, and your bonding capacity is tight. A competitor is known to be bidding a thinner sod specification and a 2-inch mulch depth. The GC says the low bidder gets the job and that substitutions 'can be worked out after award.'
1. Compute the material quantities with waste and build the bid price, being explicit about how you apply contingency, overhead, and profit.
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Quantities first, then the price.
Quantities with waste
- Sod: 28,000 × 1.05 = 29,400 sq ft; at 450 sq ft per pallet = 65.3, so order 66 pallets (you cannot buy a third of a pallet).
- Mulch: 4,600 sq ft × (3 ÷ 12) ft = 1,150 cu ft; ÷ 27 = 42.6 cu yd; add 10% for settling and cleanup = 47 cu yd.
- Trees 46, shrubs 320, edging 1,150 lf - order by unit with a small breakage allowance on the edging, typically 2–5%.
Price
- Direct cost = materials $41,600 + labor (240 hr × $28) $6,720 + equipment and hauling $2,400 = $50,720.
- Contingency 5% of direct = $2,536 → subtotal $53,256.
- Overhead 12% = $6,391 → $59,647.
- Profit: as a 10% markup on cost, add $5,965 → bid $65,612. As a 10% margin on the selling price, price = $53,256 ÷ (1 − 0.12 − 0.10) = $68,277.
The $2,665 gap between those two methods is exactly the kind of thing that quietly erases the profit on a job this size. Pick one convention, state it on the estimate, and do not mix them between the bid form and the internal budget.
2. How do you respond to the competitor's thin specification and the GC's 'we'll work it out after award' comment?
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Two separate risks: a specification you cannot match on price, and a promise that is worth nothing in writing.
The 'after award' substitution. The GC is signaling that the winner may be allowed to swap to a cheaper product later. If you price to the specified sod and mulch while someone else prices to 2-inch mulch and thin-cut sod, you lose on paper. If you bid the thin version and the owner later enforces the plans, you absorb the difference.
What to do: bid the specification exactly as drawn, then submit in the same envelope a clearly labeled alternate with its own price and a stated unit price for each material, so the GC can compare apples to apples. Attach an exclusions and clarifications page: sod species and thickness, mulch depth and product, establishment period and warranty, the water source for establishment irrigation (costly if nobody is providing it), and a statement that anything not listed is excluded.
Say in writing that any post-award change will be handled by written change order at those stated unit prices - not by 'working it out.' That is what protects you if the GC later tries to hold you to a thinner product at the original price.
If the GC refuses to accept clarifications or a written scope at bid time, that is useful information about how the job will actually run.
3. Beyond the arithmetic, what bid/no-bid and pricing-risk decisions should you make in those nine days?
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You have nine days, volatile sod prices, and limited bonding. Address each explicitly.
Price volatility. Pallet sod has moved twice in a quarter. Either hold material pricing for a stated period (say 30 days) with an escalation clause on sod and plant material tied to documented supplier increases, or carry the exposure inside your contingency. Do not do both silently - choose one and write it into the proposal.
Time to bid. Nine days is enough for a package this size only if you request supplier quotes in writing on day one and confirm the plant schedule against actual availability. An unavailable 25-gallon tree is a change order later, not a favor now.
Bonding capacity. Confirm with your surety before submitting, not after winning. A bid bond is a commitment; if performance bond capacity is not there, you either pass on the job or partner.
Bid/no-bid. If winning requires you to beat a knowingly thin specification and the GC will not accept clarifications, a low-margin win that consumes your remaining bonding capacity is worse than no win. Price it correctly, and let it go if it does not clear your margin.
Internal handoff. Whoever builds the job should review the takeoff before submission; the most common estimating failure is a quantity nobody in the field ever looked at.