After you have received all your bids and have “normalized” them by questioning assumptions and variances, it’s time to narrow your selection.  We took the two bids from our two contractors and asked them to sharpen their pencil by going over the bid and adjusting assumptions for finishes before getting to final bids.

The level of your finishes will greatly affect your bottom line.  As an example - consider the cost of using brushed nickel for all your fixtures instead of chrome.  The brushed nickel model for all our plumbing fixtures that we picked easily added a 20-40% premium - the difference of $6K instead of $4K.

As the owner, you also have the ability to cut numbers from the bid by insisting on providing finishes and even raw material.  Don’t let a GC fool you by saying that they get much better pricing being a licensed GC.  Nowadays, anyone can get the same discounts as a GC by shopping around and negotiating, most especially online.  Procuring your own materials and finish goods not only gets you a better bottome line price but also has the added advantage of not being charged the GC’s markup.