- Bid Form Overview

My name's Monica Jones and I'm a specification writer at LRS Architects in Portland, Oregon. And we're here today to talk about project manuals and how to prepare and write a specification. The bid forms are part of the procurement documents. The procurement documents are part of the project manual, but they're not contract documents. So once the contract's signed, that whole portion of the procurement kind of falls off. So the bid forms are, there's a couple ways to do it. If it's a hard bid, usually public entities, they will issue bid forms with instructions or advertisements to bid.

The bid forms will have information for the contractor, general contractors, business information, if there's any proposed alternatives or unit prices or allowances that they need to include those into the overall price. There will be some information on the bid form or the instructions for their insurance requirements.

If there's a bond required with the bid, so they can't just pull it. And then just some other personal information. I will say this, if it's a negotiated project, contractor on board, usually this bidding phase, from our experience or my experience, is not part of the process. I mean it is, but it's off the side.

The contractor is doing bidding with his subs. And that those procurement documents aren't necessarily in the project manual. It really depends on the project type and the delivery. Front end of the project manual, and that will be your bid forms, it'll be your instructions to bids, or advertisements to bids, if it's a county or a municipality they may have some other instructions like security, if it's a detention center.

Sometimes there's available information, that could be just photos of the site, a survey perhaps, a geotech. It could be all sorts of information, you know. Just sort of information to allow the general contractor or bidders to know what the project about or the site's about. Little bit of a history, so they have a feel for what they're bidding.

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