There is the cover your arse and let the GC descope to see that you have all the shit the designer didn't bother to draw school of thought and the bid exactly what is shown and hope the GC has enough contingency to cover all your change orders school of thought.

Primate @ 14/3/2018 9:44

There is the cover your arse and let the GC descope to see that you have all the shit the designer didn't bother to draw school of thought and the bid exactly what is shown and hope the GC has enough contingency to cover all your change orders school of thought.

We play both sides too, we bid just as many jobs as a concrete contractor. So we see both sides and have CYA statements in our quotes left and right. Good and bad is that it may not be what someone is expecting, but at least you have a list of what we have covered.

I'm an Audio/Video integrator. And we don't seem to get any bids if we go the "CYA" method, we have to bid exact, and then Change Order the hell out of them. Which our industry is known for, but GCs/Owners don't seem interested in figuring out why the bids have a variance.

Dadd @ 14/3/2018 10:43

I'm an Audio/Video integrator. And we don't seem to get any bids if we go the "CYA" method, we have to bid exact, and then Change Order the hell out of them. Which our industry is known for, but GCs/Owners don't seem interested in figuring out why the bids have a variance.

The bid's that I'm talking about being CYA bids are to GC's or contractors that we know share our number with others. We don't want them to have our good number. So we usually send out two separate numbers, if we are bidding to someone we don't necessarily like working with for a variety of reasons (Bid shopping, slow paying, subpar management, bad field supervision, etc.) anything that will make our lives miserable.

But that's the first thing I do is ask for a scope letter from subs so I have a good idea of what they are covering or not covering with their proposal. Without it I wouldn't be comfortable at all sending out a bid for most projects, but mainly as a GC.

Yeah. We send out scopes early and they are really detailed. Down to the page number if they are complicated.

For us it depends. We try to talk to the gc or cm and see which way they want it. CM jobs are the worst because you have to bid a blank check. If it's not shown, but needed, you have to eat it. Sometimes, If you try to attach a scope, they throw your bid away to protect their "provide everything needed to complete the job" blanket statement.

If the cm isn't great, they put out a boiler plate bid package that might include things from whatever job it was written for 10 years ago. I had one the other day. It was a single story structure with a bid package that had 20 plus items concerning stairs and floor openings.

I see the copy/paste spec book all the time.

Dadd @ 15/3/2018 11:17

I see the copy/paste spec book all the time.

Yeah.

Since this seems like something this thread would have insight on: https://www.yahoo.com/gma/several-killed-pedestrian-bridge-florida-international-university-collapses-185605227--abc-news-topstories.html

Probably used that steel from China. Wonder how many of these engineers will be killed off in the next year?

That is precisely why I never want to be in a job where I have to stamp anything.

Really crazy though, I know I definitely take for granted how seemless a majority of major construction projects go.

Dyl @ 16/3/2018 8:10

That is precisely why I never want to be in a job where I have to stamp anything. Really crazy though, I know I definitely take for granted how seemless a majority of major construction projects go.

Agreed, this is one of the downsides I was warned about getting my PE Stamp. Odds are if it's an engineering marvel like they say, some extra calc's should have been run by multiple people to prove the design worked. Of course maybe that happened, but most designs we see any more are shit and not complete.

As far as I know, they haven't done root cause on that bridge deal yet.

I caught the tail end of something on the news where they said that they already had the bridge in service, but hadn't finished tensioning the cables on it?

If that's the case, it sounds like they put schedule before safety. If so, everyone on the whole project is going down.