Delve into the intricacies of creating an effective estimate cover sheet, crucial to project proposals, bids, and comprehensive economic projections. Understand how to construct a cover sheet with the right amount of detail that remains understandable months down the line.
Key Insights
- An effective estimate cover sheet should, at the very least, contain the project name and location, proposal date, client company name, estimator's name, and the estimate amount. The scope of work and the details of the plans and specifications should also be included.
- Details of the proposal such as inclusions, exclusions, alternates, and assumptions may not always be available on the bid form. However, they are vital and should be included separately if there is no place for them on the bid form.
- The estimate cover sheet should be constructed in a way that it remains comprehensible even when referred to months after its creation. This necessitates clear, concise, and comprehensive detailing of all necessary information.
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Now let’s talk about what to include and exclude on an estimate cover sheet. It’s always good practice to create a cover sheet having all general information of the estimate regardless of whether or not it’s required as a bid proposal or a bid form that needs to be filled out. So start by identifying what the scope of the project is.
The self-explanatory, cover sheet or client-provided bid form for the estimate should be used to include the following information at minimum. Keep in mind that even if it’s not required, it’s beneficial to have some sort of a cover sheet for your estimate so that it could be understood if it’s looked at three months, six months, or a year from now. It has to still make sense.
So here we have a project name and location. The location is important as it helps identify if there are any related travel costs or different city cost indexes that may have been applied to the estimate. Very important to include a proposal date.
What date was it submitted to the client? Because very often these prices are only good for 30 days, 60 days, or 90 days. Make sure you identify that in your proposal but include a proposal date. Client company name.
This is the full name of the client or company name that you’re bidding the work to. In addition to the client company name, make sure it includes the contact information including phone and address, etc. In addition, include the estimator’s name for the project, the name of your company, and the estimate amount.
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The scope of work, and I’m noting here to specify the trades and spec sections if you're a subcontractor. So therefore, your scope would be limited perhaps to plumbing, electrical, or rough carpentry. As a general contractor, the scope may identify that it’s building number two, phase one, or whatever that may be.
For plans and specifications, dated. This is vital. You are given a set of bid documents to work off of to provide your pricing.
These should be identified carefully with the actual plan date and any specifications, and also if there are any addendums associated with them. Provide any inclusions if applicable, exclusions, alternates, and assumptions. Now, these may not always be available on the bid form.
They might not actually have any room for that. But if there’s a place to identify that or actually add a separate page, include those if acceptable. Keep in mind that exclusions are sometimes not allowed within a bid form.
So, understand your bid form and what the limitations are. If it’s a negotiated job or a client you're working directly with, you have the liberty to go ahead and identify inclusions and exclusions, and perhaps even an exclusion but then you could also provide an alternate or an add-on amount for that if it’s unclear whether or not it’s going to be required. And what I mean by assumptions is if something is unclear on the bid documents that are not clearly identified, that’s where you make an assumption because for example, you know that there’s going to be exterior paving on the outside of the building but you don’t know what type it may be.
So, you could verify that the assumption is we’re going to use colored concrete, and it might be scored every so many feet. That could be a fair assumption of what’s going to be installed on the outside that’s included in your price. So it helps validate the scope of work that you priced out in your estimate to the client.
