A bid is a promise to do a defined scope of work for a price. Win it too high and you don’t get the job; win it too low and you lose money doing it. The contractors who stay profitable aren’t the ones with the lowest number — they’re the ones with the most accurate one. Here’s the process, start to finish.
1. Read the scope — all of it
Go through the plans, specs, and any addenda before you touch numbers. Note what’s included, what’s excluded, allowances, and the schedule. Most blown bids come from missing a page, not bad math.
2. Do a quantity takeoff
Measure the actual quantities from the drawings — square footage, linear feet, counts, volumes. This is the backbone of the bid. Guess here and everything downstream is wrong. Tag anything you’re unsure of so you can verify or carry an allowance.
3. Price labor at fully-burdened rates
Apply real labor cost — base wage plus payroll taxes, workers’ comp, and benefits. The burden often adds 25–45% to the wage; bidding the bare wage loses money on every hour.
4. Price material, equipment, and subs
Use current pricing from a maintained cost library or live quotes. Get subcontractor bids for scopes you don’t self-perform, and make sure their inclusions match your scope so there are no gaps.
5. Add overhead and profit — correctly
Cover your general overhead, then add profit using the right markup. Margin is on price, not cost: a 20% margin needs a 25% markup. Get this backwards and your “profit” evaporates.
6. Add a contingency for risk
Carry a contingency sized to the unknowns — site conditions, design gaps, schedule risk. A tight, well-defined job needs less; a vague scope needs more.
7. Review, then submit a clear bid
Sanity-check the total against your gut and any historical jobs, confirm inclusions/exclusions, and submit an itemized, professional bid. A clean bid wins trust — and trust wins jobs.
Bid the cost, not the wage
The two mistakes that quietly kill contractor profit both live in the pricing: bidding bare wages instead of fully-burdened labor, and confusing markup with margin. Both are quick to check with the free tools — do it before you submit.
Let the platform do the heavy lifting
Bullwork runs the whole loop: AI reads your planset, builds a confidence-tagged takeoff, prices it from a real cost library with your markup, and produces a clean bid PDF — then turns the won bid into a live project with a budget in one click. Want to see it on your own job? We’ll build your next bid free.