You collected three bids for the same job. One is $48,000. Another is $72,000. Your instinct — and your budget — pushes you toward the low number. But the lowest sticker price is the single most misleading figure in the stack, and choosing on it is how projects blow past budget six weeks in.
Cheap usually means less
Contractors don't win low bids by being 30% more efficient than everyone else. They win them by scoping less: skipping tear-off and disposal, leaving out code-required upgrades, quoting an allowance instead of firm pricing, or omitting a trade entirely. Every one of those omissions is real work that still has to happen — it just gets billed to you later as a change order.
True cost, not sticker price
The fix is to stop comparing sticker prices and start comparing what each bid would cost if it covered the full job. Build one complete 'master scope' from all the bids together, then for each bid, add back the value of whatever it left out. That number — the bid plus the priced value of its gaps — is the true cost.
Do this and the ranking often flips. The $48,000 bid that covers 71% of the scope can carry a true cost north of $60,000 once the missing tear-off, disposal, and code work are priced in — making it the most expensive option in the room, not the cheapest.
How to protect yourself
- Never award on the headline number alone — ask what each bid does NOT include.
- Compare every bid against the same complete scope, not against each other's sticker prices.
- Treat allowances and 'TBD' line items as change orders waiting to happen.
- Keep the paper trail: a written rationale for the pick protects you when ownership asks why you didn't take the cheapest.
This is exactly what BidsScores automates: it reads every bid, normalizes them to a full scope, prices the gaps, and ranks by true cost — so the number you defend to ownership is the real one.