Finish Schedule Conflicts Five Days Before Bid

What governs

The specifications almost certainly state a precedence order, and finish identification is normally governed by the schedule over the drawings. But the answer to the bidder cannot rest on a precedence clause, because a missing tag is not a conflict the clause resolves - it is a gap, and a gap has no precedence answer.

Why not an individual RFI response

• Only the bidder who asked gets it in time, and there is no assurance anyone else receives it. The bidders are then pricing different documents, and the bids are not comparable.
• A response that changes or clarifies what the documents require is an addendum in substance. Issuing it as an RFI answer is a documentation failure even if the content is right.
• It hands the contractor an argument after award: 'we bid what we were told in the RFI, not what the drawings said.'
• Telling a bidder to carry an allowance is worse - it moves an undefined scope into a lump sum, invites an unbalanced bid, and will be resolved later as a change order with overhead and profit attached.

The answer to give

One addendum, to all four bidders, simultaneously, with receipt acknowledged.

Next 48 hours

1. Do the reconciliation yourself, room by room. Build a matrix of all rooms against all finish categories so you find every gap, not just the ten that surfaced.
2. Decide each conflict on design intent - do not average or defer.
3. Draft Addendum 3 and get it out with at least five days before bid opening, or move the bid date. Moving the date is cheaper than a bad bid.

Contents of Addendum 3

• Reissued 1/4-in enlarged plans with every finish tag restored.
• A room-by-room finish matrix for the affected rooms - the single sheet that resolves the argument.
• An explicit precedence statement: schedule governs finish identification; dimensions govern over scale; where a tag is absent, the schedule entry by room name governs.
• A clear instruction on what to do if a bidder still finds a discrepancy: submit an RFI before bid opening, do not assume.
• Acknowledgment of the addendum as a condition of bid.
• Revised bid date and confirmation that the addendum is issued to all plan holders, including any who downloaded from a plan room.

Notify

All four bidders by the same channel at the same time, with confirmation of receipt. Post to the plan room and update the addenda log.

Root cause

Two documents authored independently and never reconciled. The tags lived on the 1/8-in plan; the enlarged plans were a separate view, revised in an addendum, and reissued from a starting point that never inherited them. Nobody owned the cross-check.

Fixes

1. One source of truth. Tags should drive the schedule, not be hand-typed in two places. If you are working in a model, the schedule is a report; if you are working in 2D, the schedule is generated from a tag table and the table is the only thing edited.
2. A bidirectional completeness check at every issuance. Every room on the plan appears in the schedule, and every schedule entry appears on at least one plan. This is a mechanical check, not a design review, and it catches exactly this error.
3. Carry-forward rule. Any redrawing or reissuance of a plan keeps tags. If a sheet is regenerated, the regeneration is checked against the prior issue.
4. A signed QA checklist per discipline per issuance, with one named person accountable for the coordination of schedule, plans, and details.
5. Bid-set review against the addenda log, confirming that each addendum's changes are physically present in the issued set.

The professional judgment here is that the cost of the error is not the ten rooms - it is issuing a set that bidders cannot price consistently, which converts a design fee problem into a claims problem.