How to bid framing work as a subcontractor

Start with what you are actually bidding

Framing bids are lost on the scope line, not on the price per board foot. Before you take off a single stud, settle where your package starts and stops.

• 06 10 00 Rough Carpentry is the parent section, and most of your work sits under it: 06 11 00 Wood Framing for walls, floors and roofs, and 06 16 00 Sheathing for wall, roof and floor panels.
• 06 17 00 Shop-Fabricated Structural Wood covers trusses and wood I-joists. 06 18 00 Glued-Laminated Construction covers glulam beams. These come from a fabricator, so furnish, install or both is the first question the GC will ask you.
• 06 20 00 Finish Carpentry and architectural woodwork belong to somebody else. The backing they land on almost always belongs to you.

Then three boundaries that decide whether the job makes money.

Engineered lumber, supply versus install. LVL headers, truss packages and I-joist floor systems arrive with the supplier's own layout and delegated design. Some GCs buy the package direct and hand you install only. Some expect the whole thing in your number, including the truss layout submittal and the engineer's seal. Price one of those, and say in the proposal which one you priced.

Sheathing and the weather barrier. Sheathing is normally yours. The weather barrier over it, housewrap or a self-adhered air barrier, is specified in Division 07 and often belongs to the envelope or roofing sub. Two subs each assuming the other wraps the building is a real and common gap. Write the sentence down either way.

Wood versus cold-formed steel. On mixed jobs the wall types schedule, not the framing plan, tells you which walls are wood and which are steel. Load bearing structural metal stud framing lives in Division 05, and non-structural drywall partitions live in Division 09 with the drywall sub. If the schedule puts corridors and shafts in metal, those walls are not in your board footage, and you should exclude them by wall type so nobody assumes otherwise.

Read the drawings for your sheets

The set is large and your scope is not spread evenly through it.

• S-series structural sheets carry the framing plans, the roof framing layout, typical details and the beam and header schedules.
• Schedules beat plans, and for framing the schedules are where the labour hides. The shear wall schedule, the hold-down schedule and the nailing schedule in the structural general notes carry quantities that appear nowhere on the plan geometry.
• A-series sheets carry the wall types schedule, which is the only place that tells you stud size, spacing and material by wall type. Take off wall length by type, not as one total.
• Door and window schedules give you rough openings. The plan shows the location, the schedule shows the size, and the size is what drives your opening framing.
• Interior elevations and the accessory schedule are where blocking hides. Grab bars, handrails, TV mounts, casework, marker boards and wall hung fixtures all need backing, and they are drawn there or nowhere.
• Read the specification and general notes. Species, grade, treatment, fastener type, moisture content and whether the trusses are a deferred submittal are all in the words.

Get the quantities right

Framing lumber is bid in board feet and priced per MBF, engineered members are bid by count and length, panels are bid by sheet count or square feet, and connectors are bid each. Four unit systems in one package, which is why the takeoff has to stay itemized rather than collapsing into one number.

What the obvious takeoff misses:

• Nominal versus actual. Board foot math uses nominal thickness and width, but layout uses actual dimensions, and lumber is only sold in two foot length increments, so a nine foot stud is bought as a ten. See nominal vs actual lumber.
• Plates. A single bottom plate plus a double top plate is three linear feet of plate stock for every linear foot of wall, before the sill plate on slab. Carrying one plate instead of three is one of the fastest ways to bid a job short.
• Studs at openings. An opening does not remove studs, it adds them. King studs, cripples and the jack studs under the header replace one stud with several, plus the header itself. A takeoff that deducts openings from wall area is wrong in the expensive direction.
• Corners and intersections. Three stud corners and partition backing are per-condition counts, taken off the plan, not derived from length.
• Waste. Repetitive multifamily framing and cut-up custom work do not carry the same waste, and the gap between them is large. Derive both factors from your own completed jobs rather than using a single number for everything.

Labour is the other half, and it does not track board feet. Price crew hours per linear foot by wall type from your own history, and treat tall walls, sloped work and pick-up as their own line items.

The gotchas that only show up after the walls are standing

Connectors are scheduled, not drawn. Hangers, straps, hurricane ties and hold-downs appear as a mark in a schedule keyed to the plan, so you take them off by counting schedule marks, not by reading the framing. Miss the hold-down schedule and you have missed material, install labour, and the anchor coordination with the concrete sub who has to cast the anchors before you arrive.

Shear wall nailing patterns drive labour, not material. Two panels of the same sheathing, one nailed at six inches on centre at the edges and one at two inches, are the same board footage and very different hours. High load shear walls also pull in thicker framing members and a second sill plate. Price shear walls by schedule type as separate lines.

Blocking and backing for other trades is the item that eats framing margin. Blocking for grab bars, handrails, casework, TV mounts, coat hooks, fire extinguisher cabinets and wall hung carriers is almost never fully drawn. The material cost is trivial. The cost is that the work happens after rough framing is complete, so your crew comes back into a partly finished area, works around other trades, and burns hours per location rather than per board foot. Either carry an allowance for it and state the number of locations you assumed, or exclude it with a written list. Silence gets read as included.

What the GC checks when leveling framing bids

Bid leveling is the GC normalizing every proposal to one scope. Expect them to check:

• Board footage carried, and how long your lumber pricing holds. Lumber is a commodity, so state a validity period on the quote instead of leaving it open.
• Engineered lumber and trusses: supply, install, or both, and who owns the layout submittal.
• Sheathing in, weather barrier out, or whatever split you priced.
• Hardware and connectors in your number or GC supplied, and who supplies hold-down anchors.
• Blocking and backing: included, excluded, or an allowance with a location count.
• Fire blocking and draft stopping. See fire blocking, a code driven item that is rarely drawn and always inspected.
• Which walls are metal, by wall type.
• Hoisting, telehandler, scaffold and temporary bracing.
• Unit prices for adds, per linear foot of wall by type, per blocking location, per hanger.

Structure the proposal

Five parts, in this order: the number with the board footage and sections it covers, inclusions as items, exclusions as items, clarifications and assumptions, and unit prices for the likely adds. Exclusions are the most valuable section in the document, and for framing the assumptions section should name the blocking allowance, the lumber pricing validity period, the truss supply split and the crane or telehandler assumption.

Where this fits

Keep the takeoff that produced the board footage. When the GC calls to level, the sub who can open the takeoff and show which sheet a quantity came from wins the conversation. If you are running the takeoff itself, Ruh reads the drawing set, measures the framing, and prices the measured quantities against your own price book, with every line traceable back to the sheet it came from — the framing estimating software page walks through that flow for wood and light-gauge metal.