Bid Form Overview

3m 4s

Monica Jones of LRS Architects dives deep into a project manual and specifications.  She explains the different elements of the project manual, and shows examples of the various documents included.  She also explains how to produce a specification and the three different types.

The bid forms are part of the procurement documents. The procurement documents are part of the project manual but they're not contract document. 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 is from our experience, or my experience, is not part of the process. So, I mean it is, but it's off-site. The contractor is doing bidding with his subs. And those procurement documents aren't necessarily in the project manual.

So it really depends on the project type, and the delivery. So the 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, it'll be a survey perhaps, a geotech, it could be all sorts of informants, just sort of information to allow the general contractor or bidders to know what the project's 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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