Three quotations arrive: £245,000, £228,000 and £214,000. The ranking appears obvious until you read what each supplier has offered to do.
Supplier A includes the full defined scope. B excludes testing worth £8,000 and temporary works worth £12,000. C excludes both and a further £12,000 of disposal. These are illustrative adjustments, but the review problem is familiar: different scopes have been presented as interchangeable prices.
Keep the submitted prices intact. They are the supplier’s offers. Adjustments belong in separate columns, with their own source and explanation. Overwriting the original number loses information that the commercial team will need later.
A includes all defined scope. B excludes testing and temporary works. C also excludes disposal.
Define the comparison before ranking it
Write a common scope reflecting what the project requires. Identify interfaces likely to fall between suppliers: access, attendance, testing, temporary works, disposal, mobilisation and handover. Do not add every possible item indiscriminately; establish whether it is required and where it is already priced.
For B, the comparable value is £228,000 + £8,000 + £12,000 = £248,000. For C it is £214,000 + £8,000 + £12,000 + £12,000 = £246,000. A remains £245,000 and is the lowest on the stated comparison basis.
This does not make A automatically the right supplier. It means the lowest unadjusted quotation was not the lowest price for the same work. The exercise holds programme and other commercial differences aside so that this point can be examined clearly.
| Supplier | Submitted | Added scope | Comparable |
|---|---|---|---|
| A | £245,000 | £0 | £245,000 |
| B | £228,000 | £8,000 + £12,000 | £248,000 |
| C | £214,000 | £8,000 + £12,000 + £12,000 | £246,000 |
A is lowest on the common scope. Programme, tax and other commercial differences are excluded.
Give adjustments the same scrutiny as quotations
An allowance for missing scope is still an estimate. Where did the £12,000 for temporary works come from? Does it describe the method needed by that supplier? Is it based on another quotation, a resource build-up or provisional judgement?
Record the answer beside the adjustment. A rounded number without a basis can make the comparison look more certain than it is. If an uncertainty could change the ranking, identify that sensitivity rather than hiding it in the total.
It may be useful to obtain a clarified quotation. Keep the revision history so the team can distinguish a confirmed price from an estimator’s allowance. If the supplier later includes an item, remove the corresponding adjustment once, with the change recorded.
Look for scope that appears twice
Normalisation can introduce its own errors. Testing may already sit in a central allowance. Disposal might be included in a civil works package. Before adding either, establish whether you are comparing complete package values or preparing an overall project estimate.
A comparison can legitimately show the whole equivalent scope while the project total carries part elsewhere. The connection between those views must be explicit so that transferring the selected offer does not duplicate cost.
Make the recommendation readable
Present the original offer, adjustments and comparable total together. Follow them with unresolved qualifications and the commercial considerations that matter to the decision. Someone reviewing the recommendation should see both the ranking and the judgement behind it.
In the practice exercise, check B and C independently before selecting a supplier. Choosing A by intuition is not enough if the adjustment calculations are wrong. The useful skill is explaining why the result changes when missing scope is restored.