How to read Division 01 before you bid

Summary is short and it changes the whole estimate. 01 11 00 Summary of Work tells you about work by the owner and owner-furnished items you will install, which you have to receive, store and set without buying. 01 12 00 Multiple Contract Summary tells you if other prime contractors share the site. 01 14 00 Work Restrictions is where the occupied building, the restricted work hours, the phasing and the "owner will continue to operate" sentence live.

Each of those is time and money. A phased job in an occupied building means more mobilizations, temporary partitions, after-hours work and a longer general conditions duration. Carry the duration and the premium labor in your general conditions, and put the phasing and work hours in every sub’s scope so they price the same job you did.

Before you go further, check how this manual relates to Division 00. The contract General Conditions, often AIA A201, and the Supplementary Conditions sit in Division 00. Division 01 expands on them. Read the two together, because insurance, bonds and retainage are usually in 00, while the procedures that cost you money are in 01.

01 21 00 Allowances lists the money you carry for scope that is not designed yet: hardware, signage, a testing budget. Read exactly what each allowance covers. Under the AIA A201 general conditions, unless the documents say otherwise, an allowance covers the material delivered to site and the taxes, and your unloading, handling, installation, overhead and profit go in the contract sum outside it. So a material-only allowance still needs a labor line next to it in your bid.

01 22 00 Unit Prices lists the rates the owner wants for adding or deducting work, like rock excavation per CY or unsuitable soil per CY. Send each one to the sub who carries that work, ask for it on its own line, and check the rates against your own costs. 01 23 00 Alternates describes each alternate on the bid form. Read the description, not just the title, because it often changes more than one trade.

01 25 00 Substitution Procedures tells you whether substitutions are allowed during bidding and by what deadline. 01 29 00 Payment Procedures covers the schedule of values and pay applications. Neither costs much to price, but missing a prior-approval deadline means you bid the named product whether you like it or not.

01 31 00 Project Management and Coordination is where coordination drawings, BIM requirements, project meetings and the web-based project management software live. Weekly OAC meetings, a coordination process for MEP in the ceiling, and a named platform are all staff hours. They go in your general conditions as PM, superintendent and project engineer time.

01 32 00 Construction Progress Documentation sets the schedule requirements, from a bar chart to a resource-loaded CPM with monthly updates, plus progress photos and sometimes a site camera. A scheduling consultant or a camera service is a line item. 01 35 00 Special Procedures covers things like alteration work in existing buildings, infection control in healthcare, and security clearances for workers, and each of those can add to every trade on site.

Submittal Procedures tells you how submittals move: the electronic platform, the review time the architect gets, how many resubmittals are reviewed before the owner charges for more, and what each submittal has to contain. A long review time with a tight schedule means you start submittals the day you are awarded, and someone on your staff has to run them.

Look for the clause that charges the contractor for the architect’s time on extra resubmittals, and the one that requires delegated-design submittals stamped by an engineer. Delegated design, common for cold-formed framing, stairs and fire protection, has to be in the sub’s scope by name, or you pay for the engineer.

01 41 00 Regulatory Requirements points at the codes and the permits. Check who pulls and pays for the building permit and the trade permits. 01 43 00 Quality Assurance often holds the mockups, under 01 43 39 Mockups. A full exterior wall mockup is real work: framing, sheathing, a window, cladding, sealants, often a water test, and then demolition. Price it as its own line or make sure each trade carries its piece.

01 45 00 Quality Control, with 01 45 23 Testing and Inspecting Services, says who hires the testing agency. The usual pattern is that the owner pays for the testing and the contractor pays for retests after a failure, but read your section, because some jobs put the whole testing budget on the contractor or carry it as an allowance in 01 21 00.

This section is your general conditions in spec form. 01 51 00 Temporary Utilities says who provides temporary power, water, heat and lighting, and who pays for what they consume. 01 52 00 Construction Facilities covers field offices, an owner’s field office if one is required, and toilets. 01 54 00 Construction Aids covers hoisting and scaffolding.

01 56 00 Temporary Barriers and Enclosures covers fencing, dust partitions in occupied buildings, and weather enclosures for winter work. 01 57 00 Temporary Controls covers erosion and sediment control and dust control, and 01 58 00 Project Identification covers the project sign. Decide line by line whether each item is a GC cost or belongs in a sub’s scope. Temporary heat, for example, is often carried by the GC, with the mechanical sub running the permanent system early under a written agreement.

01 71 00 Examination and Preparation holds field engineering and layout, which you either self-perform or hire a surveyor for. 01 73 00 Execution often holds 01 73 29 Cutting and Patching, which decides who patches when one trade cuts another’s work. Put that answer in every sub’s scope. 01 74 00 Cleaning and Waste Management sets the cleaning standard, final cleaning, and, under 01 74 19, the waste diversion target and the paperwork to prove it.

01 77 00 Closeout Procedures and 01 78 00 Closeout Submittals are where the back end costs live: O&M manuals under 01 78 23, warranties under 01 78 36, and record documents, the as-builts, under 01 78 39. Check for warranty terms longer than one year and make sure the sub who installs that work carries them. 01 79 00 Demonstration and Training sets owner training hours, and 01 91 00 Commissioning, in the 01 90 00 group, can add a commissioning agent’s meetings and functional tests to the mechanical and electrical subs.

Everything you marked in Division 01 ends up in one of three places. If the GC does it or pays for it, it goes in your general conditions. If a trade does it, it goes in that trade’s scope letter with the section number, so the sub prices it and you can check that they did. If it is unclear, unreasonable, or depends on something the owner has not decided, it goes in your proposal as a qualification or out as a question during bidding.

The table below is a starting map. Your manual will move things around, so use it as a list of places to look, not a list of answers.

• Skipping Division 01 because "it is the same on every job"

  The headings are the same. What is under them changes: the review time, the testing split, the warranty term, the work hours. Read it on every job.

• Pricing an allowance as an installed number

  If the allowance covers material only, the labor to install it is yours to carry. Read what the allowance covers before you put it on the bid form.

• Leaving Division 01 out of the scope letters

  If a sub’s scope does not name the cleanup, the hoisting, the mockup and the warranty, the sub did not price them, and the GC will.

• Missing the substitution deadline

  Prior approval during bidding usually has a cutoff before bid day. Miss it and you bid the named product.

• Reading Division 01 without Division 00

  Retainage, insurance, bonds and liquidated damages usually sit in the Supplementary Conditions. Division 01 makes sense only next to them.

• Assuming testing is the owner’s

  It often is, apart from retests. Sometimes it is not. One sentence in 01 45 00 decides it.