---
id:
aliases: []
tags:
  - authorship/original
  - destiny/permanent
  - original-format/digital-text
  - type/daily
  - status/complete
title: 2025-11-06
---
# 2025-11-06

## 2025-11-06 18:12 "Bad Bid Practice"

#topic/estimating #topic/transparency

I might be reprimanded for the things I've said about deceptive bid practices
were I to repeat them to the wrong person,
but I can't, in good conscience, take them back.

In my previous position,
I regularly saw good opportunities lost,
perfect jobs turned into absurd overruns,
and historied relationships with good customers soured
by people trying to play poker instead of just selling a service.

Now I feel _myself_ sour when I see the same warning signs.

> [!quote] Proverbs 21:6, New International Version
> A fortune made by a lying tongue
> is a fleeting vapor and a deadly snare

> [!quote] Robert Palmer, "Every Kinda People"
> There is no profit in deceit \
> Honest men know that \
> Revenge does not taste sweet

When you bill your customer to provide scope
that they thought they already paid for,
they don't say "Touché" and move on,
they ask themselves what they've done for you,
what they're doing, and if you still deserve it.
**You are cashing out on good will.**

> How upset would you be paying fifty dollars for an oil change,
> just to be billed another fifty for the cost of the oil and filter?
> Would you ever go back to that shop?

When you take from a contractors profits,
they _will_ make sure you don't keep all of it,
whether intentionally or not.

Harsh words of lost profits reach the field immediately,
and they only get harsher on the way down.
Your superintendent _was_ golf buddies with the contractor's.
Now yours is buried in QA and safety paperwork
that they used to get away with pencil-whipping.

Estimators may account themselves clever
when they sell toggle switches as lighting control
or conduit as equipment grounding
but they're only playing at law.

It is... _inadvisable_ to get into a dispute over contract terminology
with an organization that---necessarily---has a larger legal department than you.
Much more so when your basis for complaint is a typo-ridden checklist
written by estimators with degrees in anything but law,
rarely construction management,
or even nothing at all.

I don't mean to disparage my well-meaning peers,
(that last category includes myself)
I only mean to say that we don't seem to be asking
the first question that should come to mind
when writing a document that could end up in court:
"How would I look explaining this to a lawyer?"
