Inviting Bidders

When inviting bidders you must first decide if you are going to use a general contractor. If you are, then you should focus on finding only general contractors. If not, then you will need to find multiple subcontractors for each trade your project scope of work requires.

If you don’t know whether to use a general contractor or multiple subcontractors, review Overview – To Use a General Contractor or Not to help you to decide.

As a rule of thumb, you can expect that for each company you talk with:

• 75% will show up to the pre-bid meeting and
• 50% will provide a bid on time and in the form requested.

Use the following calculator to help you figure out how many contractors you need to contact, to get enough bidders for your project:

Use the following formula to help you determine how many contractors you need to contact in order to get enough bidders for your project:

As a rule of thumb, you want to least three (3) bids to make a good comparison. For that, you’ll have to call eight (8) contractors. If you want five (5) comparable bids, expect to call thirteen (13) bidders. If you want three (3) bids and need four (4) trades, expect to call thirty-two (32) bidders. If you want three (5) bids and need four (5) trades, expect to call thirty-two (67) bidders. 

You can see from this example that the number of bidders gets bigger, quick. That is why professional contractors often have a stable of subcontractors that they work with regularly.

When the economy is doing well you’ll have to talk to more contractors than in lean times, because people are busy.

One trade at a time, work through your sources and start making calls, interviewing contractors and inviting them to bid the project.

When you call, ask to talk to the person responsible for providing bids. Often these people are also project managers, and you may find you have to wait for someone to call you back. Include the expected callback dates on a separate scratch sheet of paper.

When you talk with contractors, introduce yourself, and let them know that you have a project. You want to get through these conversations fast, because you have a bunch of people to talk to.

Give the contractor your project time frame, location, and short scope description from the front page of the bid package, and ask if they are interested in bidding.

This way if the project isn’t a good fit for them, they can tell you right away so you don’t waste time.

Some may not be interested and that’s OK, there are plenty of other contractors you can call. Just move on.

Add each interested contractor on your bidders list.