Write the scope before you ask for the price

Three contractors walk the same job. Three numbers come back, and they are nowhere near each other. The instinct at that point is to work out which one is honest.

Usually that is the wrong question. In my experience the spread is rarely about honesty and rarely about efficiency. It is that the three of them quoted three different jobs, because nobody wrote down which job it was.

I write quotes for a living, so I am describing this from the side that produces the numbers rather than the side that receives them. When I walk a property and the homeowner has not defined the scope, I have to define it for them in my head in order to price anything at all. So does everybody else who walks it. We each make a reasonable set of assumptions, we each price our own version, and the three versions are not the same job.

What the assumptions actually are

These are the ones that move a number the most, and almost none of them get discussed on a walk-through:

• Who supplies the materials, and to what specification.

• Who does the demolition, and who removes what comes out.

• Who provides the skip or dumpster, and who pays the tipping fees.

• Who pulls the permits, and who pays for them.

• Who protects the rest of the house, and what daily clean-up looks like.

• What condition the site is left in each evening, not just at the end.

• What happens to landscaping, irrigation, drainage and paving in the work area — whether they are repaired, replaced, or simply not mentioned.

• What the finished surface, grade or level is actually supposed to be.

• Access, parking, working hours, and whether anybody is living there during the work.

Take a single one of those — who hauls the spoil and pays to tip it — and you can move a quote by a meaningful amount without anybody being dishonest about anything. Stack four or five of them and you have explained most spreads I have ever seen.

The fix is one page, written before anybody prices it

Write the scope yourself, before the first contractor walks it, and give every bidder an identical copy.

It does not need to be technical. It needs to be specific. A line per item of work, what it consists of, and who is responsible for it. You will get it partly wrong — that is fine and expected, and any decent contractor will tell you what you have missed, which is itself a useful signal about them.

What this buys you is not a better price. It is that the three numbers become comparable. When everyone has priced the same page, a difference between them means something.

The box that is worth more than the rest of the page

Leave room on that sheet for a heading that says what is explicitly not part of this project, and fill it in.

Nearly every dispute I have seen or heard about, on anybody's job, is about something one side assumed was included. Not fraud, not incompetence — an assumption that was never said out loud because it seemed too obvious to say. The irrigation line in the trench route. The section of fence that has to come down for access. Putting the lawn back.

Writing the exclusions down converts those from an argument in week three into a conversation in week zero, when everybody is still being reasonable.

Ask what the price is not covering

When you have the quotes, ask the question in that direction rather than the other one.

“What's included?” produces a recital of the obvious. “What is this price not covering?” produces the list that actually matters: the framing they have not seen yet, the electrical bring-up-to-code, the fixture allowance that is half of what you will really spend, the landscaping nobody costed putting back.

The companion question is: what would make this go over budget, and how likely is it? Every experienced contractor has a private list of what might be behind the wall or under the ground on your particular job. Asking makes them say it out loud, and it lets you set a contingency figure that is based on something real rather than on a percentage you read somewhere.

I wrote a longer, drainage-specific version of the quote-comparison problem in how to compare three drainage quotes that do not match. The mechanics there apply to most trades.

Then write down every change, before it happens

The second biggest source of end-of-job arguments, after scope, is changes agreed verbally.

Something comes up on a Tuesday, you and the site lead agree on a sensible solution in ninety seconds standing in the garden, and everybody moves on. Six weeks later it appears on an invoice at a number nobody discussed, and neither party is lying about what was said.

The discipline that prevents this is dull and it works: every change gets a number, a date, a description, a cost impact and a time impact, and it is agreed in writing before the work is done. Even a text message with a figure in it counts. What does not count is a conversation.

The same goes for the paperwork at the end. Keep the signed contract, every change order, the final invoice marked paid, the permit and the record that the final inspection passed. A permit pulled but never finalled is worse on a title search than no permit at all, and it surfaces at the least convenient possible moment, which is when you are selling.

A note on licences and what varies

Verify the licence yourself rather than taking the number on the van as read. Most states publish a searchable register and checking takes two minutes: the number, the name it is issued to, the status, and the classification — a licence in one trade is not a licence in another.

Beyond that, be careful with general advice, including mine. Licensing thresholds, what a contract must contain, what deposit is permitted, retainage and lien rules all differ by state and often by the size of the job. Your local building department will answer the permit question for free, and for anything large the contract question is one for an attorney rather than for a contractor writing a blog post.

The tool version

I put this whole sequence into a Home Improvement Project and Budget Planner: the project brief with the not-included box, the scope sheet you hand to all three bidders, a twenty-row three-column comparison, the budget with a contingency line, and the change order, payment, permit and punch list logs. It is a fillable PDF and it contains no rates and no prices of mine — every number in it is yours.

The planner is convenience. The scope sheet is the part that works, and it works just as well on a sheet of A4 written the night before the first contractor arrives.

Who wrote this

Alex Purdy owns Carolina Terrain LLC in Waxhaw, North Carolina, and holds NC Landscape Contractor Licence CL.1872, the NC State Stormwater Control Measure Inspection and Maintenance Certification (#5970), and NDS Certified Drainage Contractor status. He is not an attorney, not a Professional Engineer, not a Registered Landscape Architect, and not a licensed general, electrical, plumbing or HVAC contractor. Nothing here is legal advice.