We are seeing an increasing number of building projects being hard bid by multiple contractors. For architects and owners it is important to remember to ask all of your bidders to provide a breakout by division. With a divisional breakdown attached to your hard bid numbers it is much easier to compare the bids. You can look at the divisions between various bidders and quickly see if a particular bidder may be high or low because of an oversight on a particular division. In addition it may point to the areas most in need of budget adjustment.
The choice of the MasterFormat numbering standard, 1995 or 2004, is not important as long as you specify so that all bidders are presenting the same categories.
