Sealed Bid Week: A Competitor's Binder, a Clerical Error, and a Curious Engineer
You are vice president of preconstruction for a mid-size general contractor bidding a $34 million municipal wastewater treatment plant upgrade. Bids are due Thursday at 2:00 p.m.
Monday: a courier leaves a competitor's binder - containing their trade partner pricing - on the shared copier outside your estimating bullpen. Two of your estimators have already seen it.
Tuesday: your mechanical estimator notices that the quote from Ridgeline Mechanical for $412,000 is clearly a clerical error. Your own takeoff for that scope is $1.38 million, and Ridgeline's number is roughly one-third of the other four quotes.
Wednesday: the owner's consulting engineer calls you at home and asks you to email your electrical subcontractor quotes "so the engineer's estimate can be validated before bid opening."
The municipal procurement rules require sealed bids, and the contract will be awarded to the lowest responsive, responsible bidder.
1. Address the competitor's binder: what actually happened, what you must do and must not do in the next 24 hours, and why it matters beyond this bid.
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The facts are the problem: you possess a competitor's pricing you were never entitled to see, and two estimators have already seen it.
Within 24 hours:
- Take physical custody. Do not copy, photograph, or transcribe it.
- Instruct the two estimators in writing not to discuss or use the contents, and document the instruction.
- Notify your CEO and general counsel the same day, in writing.
- Return it to the competitor through counsel or a sealed courier, with a written record of when it was found and when it was returned. Do not call the competitor's estimator directly to chat about it.
- If your bid is already built on your own numbers, do not reprice it. If any number was influenced, replacing it is mandatory and the bid may need to be withdrawn.
What not to do: keep it "for reference," compare your numbers to theirs, or mention it socially. Each is a fact that will eventually surface and none can be undone.
Why it matters beyond this bid: public-procurement debarment, civil claims for misappropriation of confidential information, and - most practically - the day a competitor can say you won because you read their book. A bid won that way is not a bid you can keep.
2. Address Ridgeline's $412,000 quote: what is the ethical and commercial problem, and how do you handle it before submitting a bid you can be held to?
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A quote at one-third of market is not a price; it is a mistake. And if you carry it, the subcontractor is usually bound to it - which converts their error into your problem.
Ethical problem: knowingly taking advantage of an obvious clerical error - a missing digit, a transposition, a decimal point - is not sharp bidding; it is accepting an offer you know was not intended. The test is whether the error was so obvious that a reasonable person would have caught it. At $412,000 against four quotes clustered near $1.3–1.4 million and your own takeoff at $1.38 million, it plainly was.
What to do: call Ridgeline before the bid. State the number you received and the surrounding quotes, and ask them to confirm or correct in writing by a deadline that leaves you time to rebid the package. Document the call, the time, and the response.
If they confirm $412,000 and will stand behind it with a signed quote - unusual but possible, for example if they are buying the work - you may carry it, with eyes open and written confirmation in hand.
Commercial consequence of doing nothing: a bid you cannot perform, a sub who walks, a bid protest, or a lien dispute. The cheapest resolution is a phone call before Thursday.
3. Address the engineer's request and, more broadly, what you can and cannot share and with whom during a sealed-bid procurement.
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The engineer's request is a procurement-integrity problem, not a courtesy question.
What you cannot do: send your electrical subcontractor quotes, your estimate, or any pricing to the owner's consulting engineer before bid opening. That engineer is preparing or validating the owner's estimate for the same procurement. Giving one bidder's pricing to the party that will evaluate competing bids compromises the sealed-bid process and can void an award.
What you can do: decline politely and in writing - "We are not able to share pricing before bid opening; happy to discuss scope, means and methods, or specification clarifications." Then notify your legal or procurement contact. If the request looks systemic, ask whether other bidders received the same request - equal treatment is the test. Any legitimate clarification goes through the formal question-and-answer process and comes back to all bidders as an addendum.
The general rule: information flow is one-directional and public. Questions go to the owner through the solicitation process; answers come back to everyone in writing. Anything that happens one-to-one between a bidder and the owner's representative before bid opening is a problem, even when it feels helpful - and especially when it feels helpful.