Bid day: a playbook for the last 24 hours

Bid day for a subcontractor comes down to three jobs: make sure your number reflects the final documents, get it to every GC before their deadline in the format each one asked for, and stay reachable while GCs level bids and call with questions. Lock your price the day before, check for last-minute addenda that morning, send early, confirm receipt, and keep your estimator available until each GC's bid is in.

By Michael Reddy, IntelBid

After this lesson you can

Prepare everything the day before so bid day is checking, not pricing
Send, confirm and log proposals for every GC
Handle late addenda and GC questions without mistakes

What should be done the day before?

Check every platform for addenda
PlanHub, BuildingConnected, Procore and email can each carry the latest addendum. Confirm your takeoff includes all of them.
Confirm supplier pricing
Quotes are in writing, valid past the bid date, and match the specified products.
Review the price
Run the checks in checking your bid price and write down your walk-away number.
Build each GC's proposal
One per GC, with that GC's scope, alternates and terms — see pricing for multiple GCs.
Fill in the bid forms
Every alternate, unit price and addendum acknowledgment the forms ask for.

What happens on bid day morning?

Check for addenda again. Late addenda are common, and a last-morning change can move your price.
Confirm each GC's subcontractor deadline and time zone — they differ, and they're usually earlier than the bid time to the owner.
Send in deadline order, earliest GC first, aiming for a few hours of buffer.
Confirm receipt — a reply, a platform status, or a quick call. An email that went to spam didn't make the bid tab.
Keep a sheet of which GC got which version at what time.

How do you handle late changes?

Situation	What to do
An addendum drops hours before the deadline	Re-price only what it changes, send a revised proposal citing the addendum number — or state in writing that your price excludes it
A GC asks what's included	Answer quickly, in writing, on the same thread
A GC says you're high	Confirm scope first — they may be comparing against a proposal missing something. Adjust only above your walk-away number
A supplier changes a price	Decide against the quote's validity and your escalation language; don't absorb it by default

Don't leave scope clarifications only on the phone

Bid-day calls are fast and nobody takes notes. Follow every verbal clarification with a one-line email so it's on record when the subcontract is written.

After the GC's bid goes in

Log the submission for each GC: version, total and time.
Write down what you heard — bidder counts, whether you were carried, anything about competitors.
Watch for public results on public projects, where bid openings and tabulations are often published — see reading replies and bid results.
Plan the follow-up. Cadence and wording are in the bid follow-up guide.

What should a subcontractor do on bid day?

Check for last-minute addenda, confirm each GC's deadline and time zone, send proposals early in deadline order, confirm receipt, answer GC questions in writing, and log what was sent to whom.

What if an addendum comes out right before the bid is due?

Re-price what it changes and send a revised proposal that cites the addendum, or state in writing that your price doesn't include it. Never let a GC assume it's included.

How early should a subcontractor send a bid to a GC?

Several hours before the GC's subcontractor deadline when possible. Numbers that arrive at the last minute often don't make it onto the GC's bid tab.

Key points

Price the day before; bid day is for checking, sending and answering.
Send early in deadline order and confirm every GC received it.
Put every clarification in writing and log every submission.

In IntelBid · Bid detail

Bid day on one screen

IntelBid keeps the due date, documents, addendum emails and each GC's proposal on one bid, so the bid-day checklist — what's due, what changed, who has which version — lives in one place instead of across inboxes and folders.

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About the author. Michael Reddy builds IntelBid, bid management software for commercial flooring subcontractors. These lessons come from the bid desk: how the work is priced, won and paid for.