Chapter 8: Post-letting Guidelines

Bid openings are held in Austin and are conducted by CST personnel. CST prints a bid sheet for each project to let. The bid sheet is a list, by project, of bidders who have obtained proposals. All conditions of bid acceptance must be reviewed at the opening of each bid.
These conditions include any of the following:
  • Mandatory pre-bid conference attendance;
  • Proposal Addenda Acknowledgment page “checked;”
  • Proper presentation of bids;
  • Proposal guaranty check, etc.; and
  • Signatures are complete.
Refer to TxDOT’s
Letting Manual
for more discussion on bid openings. Refer to the TxDOT.gov
Letting and Bids webpage
for additional information on bid openings.
This chapter includes the following
post-letting guidelines:
  • CST tabulate and review bids;
  • Letting overrun/underrun justification;
  • Award contract; and
  • Build contract set and load Site Manager.

8.1 CST Tabulate and Review Bids

After the bid opening, CST tabulates and reviews the bids. Bids are checked for accuracy, reasonable conformance to the engineer’s estimate, and for mathematical or material imbalance. Bids determined to be irregular may be rejected.

8.1.1 Unbalanced Bids

  • A
    mathematically unbalanced bid
     is one that contains lump sum or unit bid items based on nominal prices and other work uses inflated prices, which do not reflect reasonable actual costs plus a reasonable, proportionate share of the bidder’s anticipated profit, overhead costs, and other indirect costs. Each bid item must carry a proportional share of total cost of work plus profit. The Transportation Commission may still award these projects.
  • A materially unbalanced bid
     is one that generates reasonable doubt that a mathematically unbalanced bid will result in the lowest, ultimate cost to the State. The Texas Transportation Commission must reject a materially unbalanced bid. Although there are other unbalancing methods, unbalanced bids generally result from two situations:
    • Maximize profits. Quantity errors (too low) in the estimate; the contractor bids a high price on these items. Conversely, the contractor may underprice items that will be used in significantly lesser quantities. In this case, the apparent low bidder might not be the actual low bidder once the quantity errors are corrected; and
    • “Front loading.” The contractor’s bid prices are high on items of work occurring early in the project. This is similar to an advanced payment. In this case, the apparent low bidder might not be the actual low bidder when the State’s financial loss of potential interest income is calculated.
CST tabulates bids in increasing amounts and verifies the low bidder.
Refer to TXDOT’s
Letting Manual
for more discussion on bid tabulation and review.