# Bid leveling

*Also called: bid levelling, levelling bids, bid analysis.*

**Definition.** Bid leveling is the process of adjusting competing contractor bids onto a common basis so their prices can be compared directly — adding in what one bidder excluded, stripping out what another included, until every number covers the same work.

It is normally done as a matrix: scope lines down the side, bidders across the top, and a mark in each cell for whether that bidder included the line, left it out, or was unclear. The totals at the bottom only mean something once every column covers the same rows.

Leveling is where a bid process either earns its money or fails quietly. A $4,000 bid and a $7,500 bid frequently level to within a few hundred dollars of each other, and occasionally the cheap one levels out to be the most expensive.

The work is mechanical, which is why it is so often skipped. Reading four proposals in four formats and reconciling them by hand takes hours, and the pressure to just pick the low number is real.

## Why it matters

An unleveled comparison rewards the bidder who wrote the vaguest proposal. Leveling is the only step that makes "cheapest" and "best value" line up, and it is the step that catches the exclusion that would otherwise become a change order.

## Related terms

- [Scope of work](https://quotrium.com/glossary/scope-of-work)
- [Exclusion](https://quotrium.com/glossary/exclusion)
- [Apples-to-apples comparison](https://quotrium.com/glossary/apples-to-apples)
- [Change order](https://quotrium.com/glossary/change-order)

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Source: https://quotrium.com/glossary/bid-leveling · Quotrium — Comparable quotes for property work