Every General Contractor has experienced the “Proposal Crunch.” You have promised a comprehensive budget to a client by Friday morning, but as of Thursday afternoon, three critical trades—perhaps the electrician, the painter, and the tile sub—have yet to submit their quotes.
This puts the GC in a difficult position. Delaying the proposal risks looking unprofessional or losing the project to a more “responsive” competitor. However, submitting a budget based on guesswork is the primary driver of project losses.
Managing late subcontractor bids is not just about “chasing subs”; it is about having a clinical framework for budget completion under pressure.
When a bid is missing, the common reflex is to use a historical average or a “plug number” to fill the gap.
The danger here is that “educated guesses” rarely account for current market volatility or specific site complexities. If you carry $12,000 for an electrical package that eventually comes in at $16,500, you have effectively handed over $4,500 of your own fee to the project before the first shovel hits the ground.
To maintain your schedule without compromising your margin, adopt these three professional standards:
If a bid is missing, do not hide it within a fixed-price line item. Instead, explicitly label the line item as a “Contractor Allowance.”
By communicating to the client that the electrical number is an allowance based on current market averages—pending final subcontractor selection—you protect yourself from being locked into an unverified number. It shifts the risk from your profit margin back to the project’s reality, where it belongs.
Late bids are often a result of poor “invitation visibility.” Subcontractors prioritize the GCs who make it easiest to bid.
Establish a protocol where a personal follow-up (not just an automated email) occurs exactly 72 hours before the client deadline. This provides the sub enough time to prioritize your request or, at the very least, give you a “rough-order-of-magnitude” (ROM) number that is more accurate than a blind guess.
If you have received two bids for a trade but are waiting on a third, do not wait for the third to start your analysis. Use a Bid Leveling process immediately.
Compare the two existing bids line-by-line. If they are within 5% of each other, you can move forward with high confidence in that number. If there is a 30% variance, you know that the scope is likely misunderstood, and you must pause before presenting that division to the client.
Sometimes, a late bid isn’t just about a busy subcontractor—it’s a warning signal. If you have invited five qualified electrical subs and zero have responded, you need to look at the project itself.
Subcontractors are “The Canary in the Coal Mine.” If they see plans that are incomplete, a schedule that is impossible, or a site that is a logistical nightmare, they simply won’t bid. They would rather spend their time on a project that is “ready to build.”
Before you start plugging numbers to hit your client deadline, ask yourself: Why is nobody bidding this? It may be that your client has unrealistic expectations or the architect has left too many “gray areas” in the drawings. Identifying this “Risk Signal” early allows you to have a tough conversation with the client before you sign a contract that nobody wants to work on.
The stress of late bids is usually caused by a lack of status visibility. If you have to search your inbox to see who has responded, you are wasting the very time you need for estimating.
Professional bid management requires a real-time dashboard. You should be able to see, at a glance:
Bid Bench was designed to eliminate the “Proposal Crunch” by centralizing bid status. Instead of manual tracking, the system provides a live “Bid Board” for every project.
Stop the deadline panic.
Maintain your professional reputation and your margins with a structured bidding process. Start your free trial at app.bidbench.com/signup.