How to Compare Contractor Quotes Beyond the Bottom-Line Price
Two quotes for the same job are only comparable when they describe the same job. The lowest total is usually the shortest list of work rather than the lowest cost, and the contractor-registration office of the Department of Labor & Industries puts the warning plainly: comparing “only on price may get you a less than desirable result.” A comparison becomes real when the document behind each number is complete — a written bid carrying the contractor’s registration number, and, on any project of $1,000 or more, the state’s disclosure notice in your hands before work starts.
This page is the method for reading bids against each other. Verifying the business behind a bid is its own checklist, and what the whole project has to settle before anyone bids is the cluster’s overview.
Why the lowest number is rarely the lowest cost
The department’s instruction is to interview several qualified, registered contractors and get bids in writing, then evaluate all aspects of them — the scope of work, warranties, references, completion dates and price together. Its own comparison worksheet is blunter still: don’t just look for the lowest price.
What it tells you to compare is concrete. Start and end dates, the products to be used, and the warranties offered; then verify that permit fees, taxes and other costs are included in the bid. Every one of those is a place where two totals can describe two different jobs.
Get the bids in writing, from registered contractors
The department’s worksheet asks for at least three written bids from registered contractors, and the registration number must appear in the contractor’s advertising and on the written bid. That single field is what makes a bid checkable: a bid that cannot be matched to a registration number has failed the first test before its price is read. An unregistered bidder carries no bond or insurance to protect you, and Washington makes it a gross misdemeanour to advertise, submit bids or perform construction work without a registration.
What the document has to contain before it can be compared
The department publishes a minimum content for the agreement: the price including sales tax; the payment terms and the completion date; permit fees if applicable; the specific work to be performed; a list of the materials, major suppliers and subcontractors; and the warranties together with the process for change orders. How those terms are assembled into a whole project is the pillar’s subject. The point here is narrower: a bid missing those fields cannot be placed beside a bid that has them.
One more document arrives before work starts. On a repair, alteration or construction project of four or fewer residential units where the bid or contract price is $1,000 or more, state law requires the contractor to give you a written disclosure statement — the notice set out in RCW 18.27.114 — before starting work. It states the registration number, the amount of the bond and the registration’s expiration date, warns that your property may be liened, and tells you that you may withhold a percentage of the contract as retainage. The contractor keeps a signed copy for three years, and if the registration expires or is suspended or revoked before the work finishes, the contractor must tell you.
The fields that decide a comparison
Put every bid into the same grid, in the same order. The right-hand column is why the field changes the answer rather than decorating it.
| Field | What to ask each bidder to show | Why it changes the answer |
|---|---|---|
| The work | The same items, named the same way, in every bid | A total prices the list it was written against |
| Quantities and units | Measured areas or lengths, and the unit each price uses | A lump sum hides what a measured price exposes |
| Materials | Model numbers; anything unchosen listed as an allowance | An allowance is a placeholder to be spent later |
| Exclusions | A written “not included” list, not silence | An unstated exclusion returns as a change order |
| Permits | Who obtains them, and whether the fee is in the bid | The department treats a permit pushed onto you as a warning sign |
| Access and setup | How the crew reaches the work; water and power | Access decides the labour, and labour decides the price |
| Protection and cleanup | What is covered, who clears up, and where debris goes | Omitted cleanup and disposal arrive as extras |
| Dates | Start, completion, and the milestones between them | Start and end dates sit on the department’s own comparison list |
| Payment | Deposit, progress payments, retainage, final payment | Two schedules are two different risks |
| Change orders | How a change is priced, approved and recorded | The department’s instruction is to get changes in writing |
| Warranty | What is covered, for how long, and on what | A written warranty is a compared item, not an assumption |
The grid is the publication’s own structure, built from the fields the department itself names and from the notice’s own wording. Read it as the questions to put to bidders, not as a form to fill in and file.
Payment terms are part of the price
How the money moves belongs in the contract, and the department is specific about the pattern: pay as work is completed and phases are finished rather than to a calendar, keep a reasonable down payment, withhold a portion until you are satisfied, and get a receipt for every payment. It advises against paying in full before the work is done, and lists the warning signs it wants you to recognise — a contractor who wants only cash, a very large deposit, or payment made out in an individual’s name rather than the business’s. Where you advance money for materials, its suggestion is a check payable to both the contractor and the supplier.
Retainage is worth understanding before you compare schedules, because the state’s notice describes it as something the owner holds: you may withhold a contractually defined percentage of the contract for a stated period. A bidder who objects to a retainage clause is telling you something the price does not.
Change orders: the scope you compare is the scope you sign
The department’s instruction is to get any change in material or scope in writing, and to avoid verbal contracts or amendments. It also suggests agreeing in writing, before work begins, how cost overruns and cleanup will be handled.
Washington law gives writing a second value. An action on a contract in writing may be brought within six years under RCW 4.16.040; an action on a contract that is not in writing falls under the three-year limit in RCW 4.16.080. A change agreed on the doorstep and never written down is the version that has to be argued about later. Compare bidders on how a change is priced, approved and recorded — not only on the price of the base job.
What no bid settles: the lien exposure
The comparison ends with a document question the price cannot answer. The department’s guidance is that the property owner is ultimately responsible for ensuring that suppliers, subcontractors and workers are paid, even where the prime contractor has been paid in full.
The lien statutes set the clock. A claim of lien must be recorded within ninety days of the last labour, services, materials or equipment furnished, and the claimant must mail a copy to the owner within fourteen days of recording; failing to do so forfeits the right to attorneys’ fees and costs, not the lien. On payment and demand, a lien claimant must prepare and deliver a release of lien rights. If a lien is recorded, the owner may withhold the claimed amount from the prime contractor.
Two consequences follow from the department’s own advice. Before the final payment, request a completed lien release from the major subcontractors and suppliers; and where a notice of intent to lien arrives, stop paying until the contractor produces releases. Where money is advanced, a check payable jointly to the contractor and the claimant is the department’s recommended way to have a lien removed. For a project over $6,000, it suggests asking the contractor to post a performance bond for the project, which insures the owner for the project’s value if the contract is not completed as agreed.
The comparison, in order
- Write one brief and send the same brief to every bidder, asking for the same document back in the same order.
- Match each bid’s registration number to the state’s record before reading the price.
- Lay the bids into the grid above, and turn every “not included” and every unnamed material into a question.
- Ask each bidder to price the missing items in writing, so the comparison is between complete jobs rather than between a job and a sketch.
- Compare the answers rather than the totals, and where the totals still differ, ask what in the scope explains the difference.
- Sign a contract carrying the department’s minimum content, and keep the disclosure notice where the price is $1,000 or more.
- Before the final payment, walk the work with the contractor, list what remains, confirm the permits and inspections, and collect the lien releases.
What to keep
Keep the brief, the bids, the contract, the disclosure notice, every change order, every lien release and the receipts for every payment in one place. If a bidder will not put the work, the price and the change process in writing, that is the comparison’s answer — and the department’s own warning-sign list says the same thing. The number in the box is the last thing to compare, not the first.