Know what your number is missing
Four services off one method: read the whole set, cite every line, and never publish a figure that cannot be traced back to a document. Whether you are bidding the job or awarding it.
Public agency or private owner, any trade, any state. DASNY · SUCF · MTA C&D · DCAS · SCA · DDC · NYCHA · HPD, and the private work that borrows their documents.
Four services, one method
Each one runs on its own site, with its own pricing and its own intake. Nothing here is a retainer, an hourly rate or a change order — every engagement is a flat fee agreed before work starts.
For the bidder · before you price
Bid Document Risk Review
Every drawing sheet and specification section read before you bid, with the conflicts, the gaps and the scope that is obligated but drawn nowhere — each one cited to the sheet and section it came from, and an RFI log you can send to the Owner as written.
The scope that isn't in the drawings is still yours to build. The review tells you what the documents leave open while there is still time to price it, exclude it or ask.
For the bidder · the measuring
Quantity Takeoff
You send the set you are actually bidding; the workbook comes back with every quantity already in it, cited to its drawing and specification source. Not one dollar figure in the file — the rate columns are yours, and every total moves when you fill them in.
The bid date doesn't move. The takeoff is what eats the week you needed for pricing, so the days you have left go on judgement instead of measuring.
For the bidder · the number
Bid Estimate
Everything in the takeoff, plus the price: prevailing wage rates for the job's county, productivity and every unit rate benchmarked against a stated market band, and staff, general conditions and mobilization priced as build-ups, not plugs — issued as a workbook, a bid basis and a transmittal.
A number you can stand behind at the bid opening — every line traceable to the set, so you know what you are carrying and what you left out.
For the owner · before you award
Owner's Independent Cost Estimate
An owner-format workbook, a ten-section Basis of Estimate and a transmittal, issued as one set: five WBS axes on every line, guards that compute their own verdicts, three independent reviews before issue, and a reconciliation to the bids when they open.
An Owner's estimate is not a price. It is a position you can defend after the award — against the low bid, the change order and the claim, in front of someone who was not in the room.
Which one you need
The dividing line is which side of the bid you sit on. A bidder is asking what to charge; an owner is asking what it should cost. The same documents answer two different questions.
| You are | The question in front of you | Start here |
|---|---|---|
| Bidding, and the set arrived late You have the documents and not enough days to read all of them before the date. | What is in this set that will hurt me if I miss it? | Bid Document Risk Review |
| Bidding, and the measuring is the bottleneck You know how to price it; you do not have the hours to take it off. | Can someone hand me the quantities, cited, so I can price? | Quantity Takeoff |
| Bidding, and short of estimators The job is worth chasing and nobody in the office has the weeks to build the number. | Can someone build the whole price, the way I would, and show the work? | Bid Estimate |
| Owner, owner's rep or developer, pre-award Bids are due, or in, and nobody independent has checked the number. | What should this cost, and can I defend that after the award? | Owner's Independent Cost Estimate |
| Owner, mid-contract A change order or a claim has arrived and the price is asserted, not built. | What is this change actually worth, priced off the wage determination? | Owner's Independent Cost Estimate |
| PM-CM or cost-management firm An estimate is due and your own estimators cannot reach it. | Who can take this on with a method I can put my name next to? | Owner's Independent Cost Estimate |
The method underneath all four
- Every volume read in full, before a line is measured or priced Targeted searching finds the scope and misses the obligations. A specification-mandated service has no quantity on any drawing, and a constraint that halves a crew's output is a sentence in Division 1 — not a number in a schedule. The prevailing wage schedule is often bound into the volume everyone skims.
- Every line cited to where it came from Sheet and key note for a quantity, specification section for an obligation, the wage determination for a rate. A figure with no source behind it does not go in the file.
- Checks that can actually fail Guards and reconciliations are computed from the file's own cells, never typed. A benchmark that reads "within band" beside a value outside it is worse than no benchmark at all.
- One flat fee, agreed before work starts No hourly billing, no change orders on the fee, and nothing owed until the price is agreed.
Start with the documents
Every service begins the same way: send the solicitation number, the date, and a link to the full set — every volume, not a summary. You get the confirmed tier, the fee and the date back the same business day, and nothing is owed until that is agreed.
Not sure which fits, or it is none of the four? Write to equitydevelopmentstrategiesllc@gmail.com with the project and the date, and you will get a straight answer about whether this is useful to you — including when it is not.