I have complained about addendums before. I believe I said they were the bane of my existence. I am saddened to say the situation is getting worse. Actually, saddened is the wrong word. I am angry. The number of high impact addendums I am getting is ridiculous. I am working evenings and weekends to meet my bid dates. It has gotten to the point that almost every project I bid has multiple significant addendums.
I would like to have a conversation with all of you regarding this problem. Has it affected you, and how are you dealing with it?
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I hate um too. It appears the A/E groups put out garbage (thats why I call um oughta-chokes). I dont know any better way to handle them than treat them as individual jobs. As far as changes during the job, a local contractor prices them as if they will be done after the contract is finished and sometimes the contract is finished before they get done, right? I like his idea! Include cut n patch etc. or a separate crew, whatever makes it painful to these guys.
Documents for many large projects are so incomplete, I frequently don’t begin an estimate before a few addendums come out. Most large job bids are delayed one or two times before bidding and we had one this year that was delayed 5 times over 6 months before being cancelled and reissued.
How do you manage your bidding schedule? Are you building in time for the addendums? Do you simply react to the addendums and make adjustments?. Do you end up not bidding other jobs because of the addendums?
I must agree. A/E firms are not performing any review of drawings or specifications before issuing for bids. Drawings are being created by CAD operators that have limited practical skills and are issued with little or no review. Specifications have been “cut & pasted” so many times that it is impossible to determine what is actually required. The references to various Standards Agencies create additional confusion and cost time and money to locate and obtain. Contractors are required to identify and correct deficiencies before bidding or make changes after contract award. Change orders are also a no-win situation. In my opinion, the direct, indirect, and intangible costs in preparing and executing a change order far outweigh any compensation that may be obtained.
Do you correct the deficiencies yourself, or write an RFI? I am finding that the bid periods are often so short that the cut-off date for RFI’s passes before the problems can be found.
I agree with all that has been said. I may add that in this now society deadlines are shorter and everyone believes they need a quote immediately and they want it to be accurate. I believe A/E are hoping things are missed so the price will be lower. If they did thier job to begin with there would not be a need for all the addemdums. When addendums are added they will not extend the bid date which is unfair.
Do you end up working late because of addendums?
Yes usually nights and weekends because they will not extend the bid date.
We submit many RFI, both before bid and after award. The problem is that the wording must be very precise in order to lead the reader to provide a reasonable answer. For instance , if you simply ask if they want product “a” or “b”, the standard reply is either “yes” or “pending”. Since product “b” may cost four times more than “a”, the estimator must make an assumption, or await additional information, that may or may not arrive before the project is due. Lately, addenda have been issued as late as the day of the bid. This is unreasonable and only creates a disparity in the bids as everyone scrambles to consider all the unknowns.
I tend to avoid RFI’s if possible they seem to either lead to more addenda or are not answered. I think the only way forward is to heavily qualify your bids, along the lines of, “In the absence of detailed information…” and either assume or excluded. The problem can only get worse as A/Es fees are cut more and more, here (UK) they are having to give fixed prices for jobs, instead of being on % of the contract value. Many jobs are just not being checked before going out of the door.
The thing is, I’m an independent estimator and have to work on fixed fees, if my prime cost estimate and information I provide, is not up to scratch, then I don’t get paid end of. If I produced estimates of a quality equal to many of the designs I price, I would be working for nothing.
With the current economic climate, my clients are (understandably) reluctant to rock the boat too much and say that the it is impossible to bid the job on the information provided or press to hard for tender period extensions.
CAD operators… who ever heard of drawing in light yellow and Light grey then pdfing the drawing with the highest security so it nearly impossible to change the colours for printing or viewing on screen.
Yep, I agree.
It seems that GC’s have gotten into the habit of sending out crap plans to get a ballpark price.
Then after they pick you for the job and it’s actually been certified with all kinds of errors/omissions from the A/E, they swamp you with the addendum’s and want it the next day.
It’s bull. My philosophy now is: Unless it’s Certified before hand..it doesn’t get bid. Stop wasting my time.
I am unfamiliar with “Certified” plans. What are they? Here in southern California, the only review we get is called plan check, and it is done by the city or county before you can get a permit. Sometimes it’s done before the bid. Very often it is not.
What I mean by “Certified” is approved by the City/County/State for bid.
I don’t know about you guys, but I routinely get bids from Architects and Homeowners and the like with plans that are pretty much drawn by hand (erasure marks included).
They normally don’t include such items as Smoke Detectors or HWH’s.
Panel Schedule? Ha If your lucky. Oh that’s right there is no engineer certification so no, that’s not included.
So what are you supposed to do in this situation?
Try to Design/Build it?
OR
Bid as submitted with a laundry list of noticed omissions and errors. Afterwards you know the addendums will come swarming in once it doe’s eventually get “Certified”.
Everyones story sounds the same. Here we get last minute addendums and usually with no new bid date. For me it either means nights and weekends or there has even been times that I just delete my job info and decide not to bid it. Just last week there was a bid due on Tuesday, well I show up Tuesday morning with only needing my suppliers and sub prices, well when I got to the office there was a (and I kid you not) 45 page addendum with NO new bid date.
Have you ever worked all weekend just to have a Monday bid postponed Monday morning?
In my modest experience, addendums are so often used in the worst cases to try to fix a myriad of mistakes from missing or incomplete details to entire system changes, often with no new drawings issued. These jobs should be pulled, fixed, and re-issued, but rarely are. Even when I “qualify” my scope, the GC’s simply force us to accept the language included in the General Conditions, which often limits our markup on changes and relieves the consultants of responsibility.
My latest “successful” bid only had 3 issued (within 5 days from first to last), but the second (issued 2 days before the bid) completely replaced all of the fire alarm system, CCTV locations and equipment, access control system, changed a full third of the approved fixture types, added 2 alternate packages, revised the main distribution riser, changed the geo-thermal systems to split systems (which affected a ton of power needs), and added 3 specification sections, all while only including 2 sketches showing changes to some notes. NO NEW DRAWINGS AT ALL!!! I have gotten so skittish of addendums, that I have been known to scrap whole projects because of the wholesale changes issued in addendums with no extensions. I would rather lose that time than lose my shirt after being awarded a project with major mistakes.
Case in point: I worked for two weeks on a major project and was done two days before bid when an addendum was issued that broke the project into 9 parts (base + 8 alternates). The scramble to fix caused us to miss about $50K due to errors while breaking it up. We “won” the job (probably because of the money we left on the table), and just wrapped it up last month after 20 months, and will only put about $65K of profit in the bank on a project worth $1.8M with change orders. Its enough to make me consider becoming a greeter at Wal-Mart! And to think I once studied to be an EE!! It makes me angry when we get plans (usually only at most 2 weeks before bid), do our level best, then are held to account everything on the plans and specs, but only usually allowed a fixed markup on any change orders (usually less than our overhead expenses). In 10 years of contracting, only once have I seen an architect or engineer be held accountable by an owner for poor design. Usually the owner bears the cost of the designer’s mistakes (i assume because most of them don’t know any better), while the contractors are held financially responsible for not being able to read the minds of the consultants. Something has to change.
This post mirrors my experience to a T. “Engineered” drawings are continuing to get worse.
Are any of you members of an electrical contractor’s assotiation? Can you find out if your organization is doing anything about this matter? I know that several of these groups spend a lot of our dues on lobbying efforts. Is it time they started trying to set standards for “engineered” construction documents?