A good condition assessment ends with a long, specific list: every deficiency photographed, described, located, and prioritized. That list is exactly what ownership needs to decide what to fix. It is not what a contractor needs to price the work. Contractors bid scopes, and a report is not a scope.
Owners who forward the report and ask for a quote usually get bids that cannot be compared. One contractor prices the items they recognize and skips the rest. Another adds a contingency for everything they could not see. A third prices a different interpretation of the same finding. The fix is a bid packet: the assessment, reorganized so every bidder prices the same thing.
Group the findings by who will do the work
Assessments are organized by building system and location, which is how ownership reads them. Contractors read by trade. The first step is to regroup the findings so each bidder sees only their part: plumbing findings for the plumber, electrical for the electrician, doors and hardware, walls and finishes, and so on. Each finding keeps its photograph, its note, its location, and its priority, so the bidder can see what they are pricing without a site visit for every line.
Tell each bidder exactly what to price
The most useful instruction in a packet is the one that says what kind of price is wanted, line by line:
- A repair price where the finding is the problem itself: a loose fixture, a damaged door closer, a missing cover plate.
- An evaluation price where the finding is a symptom: a recurring leak behind a wall, a unit discharging water, staining with no visible source. Asking for a repair price on a symptom invites a guess. Asking a licensed specialist to price the investigation gets a real number for the first step.
- Two prices where the scope is a decision ownership has not made yet, such as one area versus the whole building. Pricing both lets ownership decide with the numbers in hand instead of sending the packet out twice.
What stays out of the packet
Leave out internal cost estimates and budget ranges. A number in the packet anchors every bid to it, and the point of bidding is to learn what the market says. Leave out other bidders, and anything about the property that the work does not require. Put in what the work does require: access and working hours, whether the building is occupied, any escort or sign-in rules, the response date, and the documents a bidder must include, such as proof of insurance and licensing for the trade.
Make the bids comparable
Comparison depends on format. Every bidder should price the same lines, in the same units, with a place to state exclusions and clarifications. Bids that come back as narrative quotes in different layouts take hours to line up and still hide differences. Bids that come back line by line in one format can be set side by side in minutes, and the gaps show immediately: the line one bidder skipped, the clarification that changes a price, the exclusion that moves cost back to the owner.
Leveling is the step after the bids arrive. Where two prices differ widely on the same line, ask both bidders what they included. The answer is usually a scope difference, not a pricing difference, and it is cheaper to find before award than during the work.
From packet to completed work
Once a bidder is selected, the packet lines become the work order, and each line still points back to its finding. That link is what makes closeout simple: the completed work is documented against the original photograph, and the finding is closed with an after photo. Our article on moving from observation to execution covers the sequencing decisions in between, and evaluating vendor invoices covers the review at the end.
How Proportional FM handles it
When ownership wants pricing on assessment findings, Proportional FM builds the packet from the report itself: findings exported by trade with their photographs, notes, and locations, an instruction on each line for repair or evaluation pricing, scope options priced both ways where ownership has not decided, and no internal estimates. Bidders enter prices line by line online, so every response returns in the same format. The findings come from our Facility Condition Assessments, and the bidding, award, and follow-through run through vendor coordination.
