The problem

You send one enquiry package to three contractors. Three quotations come back. One is noticeably lower than the others, and the temptation is immediate: circle the lowest number and move on. The difficulty is that the three prices almost never describe the same work. Each contractor has read the same package through the lens of what they normally do, priced what they chose to see, and quietly set aside what they didn’t. What looks like a price comparison is often a comparison of three different projects that happen to share a title.

This is the most common trap in pre-award commercial work across MENA construction — Lebanon, the Gulf, Egypt, Jordan. The bids differ not because one contractor is cheaper, but because one is offering less.

Why it matters

The gap you don’t see before award becomes a variation after it. A quotation that omitted the builder’s work in mechanical areas, or priced blockwork but not the plaster and paint over it, will read as the low bid on the day and as a series of change orders six weeks later. By then the contractor is mobilised, the leverage has shifted, and the number that won the job is no longer the number you pay. Comparing quotations properly is not about distrust. It is about making sure the decision rests on like-for-like coverage rather than on who was most optimistic about what the client would notice.

The documents involved

The enquiry or tender package you issued, including the scope brief and any bill of quantities.
Each contractor’s priced submission — ideally the full priced BOQ, not only the cover total.
Each contractor’s list of exclusions, assumptions, qualifications, and clarifications.
Any allowances, provisional sums, and prime cost sums each contractor carried.
The drawings and specifications each contractor says they priced against (revision numbers matter).

If a contractor priced against an earlier drawing revision than the one you issued, you are already comparing two different scopes before you reach a single rate.

What usually gets overlooked

Builder’s work in connection with MEP — chases, openings, plinths, access panels — priced by one, assumed by another to sit with the mechanical trades.
Attendances and preliminaries — scaffolding, hoisting, temporary power, site cleaning — folded into rates by one contractor and listed as a separate lump by the next.
Finishes to hidden faces — the back of a bulkhead, the top of a duct, the substrate behind a cladding line.
Testing, commissioning, and closeout — O&M manuals, as-built drawings, spare-parts schedules — often thin or absent in the lowest submission.
Provisional sums carried at different values for the same undefined item, which makes one bid look lower purely because its placeholder was smaller.

A short example

Consider three fit-out quotations, anonymised. Contractor A totals lower than B and C. Reading the priced BOQs line by line, A has priced the partition framing and boarding but left the acoustic insulation inside those partitions to a note that reads “insulation by others.” B and C both carried the insulation. The difference between A and B is almost exactly the value of that insulation. A was never cheaper — A had drawn a quieter scope boundary and let the total speak for itself. Nothing in A’s cover sheet was untrue; the boundary simply lived on a line most readers skip. Surfacing it turned “lowest bid” back into “same scope, different framing.”

A workable review sequence

Normalise the structure. Map every quotation back onto one common line-item framework so the same work sits on the same row for each contractor.
Line up the exclusions. Put every contractor’s exclusions and assumptions against each other; an item excluded by one and included by another is a real price difference, not a saving. (See our companion note, How exclusions and assumptions quietly distort contractor bid comparison.)
Reconcile the provisional and PC sums. Bring every placeholder to a common basis before you compare totals.
Check the drawing and specification references. Confirm each contractor priced the same issued revision.
Rebuild the comparison on equal coverage. Add back the value of what a low bid omitted, so the totals describe the same project.

Steps two through four are where most of the movement happens, and they connect directly to the questions upstream: what to check in a BOQ before you award and where construction scope gaps usually hide.

Questions worth asking each contractor

Which drawing and specification revisions did you price against?
What have you assumed sits with other trades or with the client?
Are your preliminaries and attendances inside the rates or carried separately?
What value did you place on each provisional and PC sum, and what does it cover?
What in this package did you choose not to price, and why?

What RFQS helps organise

RFQS supports the pre-award commercial review that sits behind these questions. Through the Scope of Services (SOS) review, we help organise contractor quotations onto a common structure, line up exclusions and assumptions side by side, and surface where two totals are describing different scopes. RFQS organises the evidence so the decision — which remains entirely yours — rests on a like-for-like view rather than on a cover-sheet number. We show what the documents support, and where assumption begins.

If you want to try the approach on your own quotations first, the free F-01 Scope Starter Checklist walks through the same coverage checks in a page you can use today. If you would like a second set of eyes on a specific comparison, the Pre-Award Commercial Review service is the matching step.

→ Start with the free F-01 Scope Starter Checklist, or see the Pre-Award Commercial Review and request a Fit-Check.

Service boundary: RFQS provides Quantity Surveying Support Services and organises commercial information to support your own decisions. RFQS does not verify or sign off quantities, cost, or scope coverage, and does not replace your own legal, engineering, or design input. Questions of contract interpretation sit with your legal counsel; questions of design adequacy sit with your project’s engineers and architects.