Exclusion
What is exclusion?
An exclusion is work a contractor states it will not perform at any price — permits, disposal, code upgrades, or access work someone else must cover. Exclusions create scope gaps: the work still has to happen, so its cost lands on the owner. Reading the exclusions list is how you catch a deceptively low bid.
Every serious bid has an exclusions section, and it's the most important paragraph in the document. It tells you exactly what the price does not cover. Two bids can look similar until you notice one excludes permits and code-required upgrades that the other includes.
An exclusion is different from an allowance. An exclusion is work the contractor won't do; an allowance is work in the contract with a placeholder price. Both distort a bottom-line comparison, in different directions.
What is an allowance in a bid? →
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