How to bid landscaping work as a subcontractor

What you are actually bidding

Landscape work sits in Division 32, Exterior Improvements, and the package almost never stops at the plants. Settle each of these boundaries before you price anything:

• 32 90 00 Planting. Underneath it, 32 91 00 Planting Preparation (soil prep, amendment, fine grading of planting areas), 32 92 00 Turf and Grasses (sod, seed, hydroseed), and 32 93 00 Plants (trees, shrubs, groundcover, perennials).
• 32 84 00 Planting Irrigation. Mainline, laterals, valves, heads, controller, low voltage wire, sleeving, and the point of connection.
• Hardscape, if it is yours. 32 14 00 Unit Paving, 32 32 00 Retaining Walls for site walls, 32 31 00 Fences and Gates. These ride in the landscape package on some jobs and sit with the sitework or concrete package on others. There is no convention. Read the bid form.
• 31 22 00 Grading. Specifically, where the earthwork sub stops and you start.

That last one is where the money leaks. The earthwork sub is normally contracted to a subgrade a stated depth below final grading, and your topsoil and amendment fill that depth back up. If the earthwork scope says "grade to finish grade" instead of "grade to subgrade, X below finish grade", then every inch of soil you place raises the site above design grade, and you become the party stripping it back off and hauling it away. Ask the question in writing before bid. If nobody answers, write the assumption into your proposal with a unit price for excess spoil removal from planting areas.

The second boundary is where the topsoil comes from. A spec that says "reuse on-site stockpiled topsoil" is not a guarantee that the stockpile exists, that it is big enough, or that it will pass the agronomic suitability test the same spec requires. Stripped topsoil sits loose in a pile, gets driven over, mixes with subsoil, and grows a season of weed seed before you get to it. State clearly whether your number is based on the stockpile or on imported soil, and carry a unit price for the other case.

The third boundary is the irrigation point of connection: the tap, the meter, the meter fee, the backflow preventer, its enclosure, and the certified test at startup. Civil drawings often show a stub and a note reading "irrigation POC by others", which means nobody has it.

Read the drawings for your sheets

• L-series landscape sheets carry the planting plan, the irrigation plan, the layout or hardscape plan, the details, and the plant schedule.
• The plant schedule beats the plan for species and size. The plan beats the schedule for count. Schedule quantities are typed by hand late in design and they drift from the symbols on the sheet every time a bed gets resized. Count the symbols. When your count and the schedule disagree, say which one you bid on and by how much they differ. That single sentence has won more leveling calls than a sharper unit price.
• C-series civil sheets. The grading plan gives you spot elevations at the edges of your planting areas. The utility plan gives you the water main, the POC and the meter location. The drainage plan tells you what is buried under your beds. The erosion control sheet and the SWPPP tell you what temporary measures you may inherit and what "final stabilization" is defined as on this permit, because the permit does not close until vegetation is established and somebody has to maintain it until then.
• A-series and S-series for plazas, planters over structure and site walls. A planter over a parking deck brings waterproofing protection, a drainage layer, geotextile and a soil weight limit into your scope conversation. A tall site wall may be a structural retaining wall with rebar and an engineered footing rather than a landscape wall.
• The specification, in full. Plant standards and acceptable substitutions, topsoil and amendment requirements, the soils testing requirement, the maintenance period duration, the warranty duration and replacement obligation, and how landscape substantial completion is declared. All of it is in the words, none of it is in the geometry.

Getting the quantities right

Landscape is a mixed-unit trade, which is why it gets mis-bid. Take each unit on its own terms:

• Trees, shrubs and specimens by each, broken out by species and size. A 3 inch caliper tree and a 15 gallon shrub are both "1 ea" and they are not the same money. Never total plants as one number.
• Sod, seed, hydroseeding and mulch by area. Square feet or square yards, whichever your price book uses. Keep the sod areas and the seed areas separate, and read the hatch legend twice, because lawn and hydroseed hatches look similar at plotted scale.
• Topsoil, amendment and mulch by cubic yard. Area times depth divided by 27, then add for the difference between loose delivered volume and placed compacted volume. Derive that factor from your own placement history rather than a generic number.
• Irrigation mainline, lateral, sleeving and edging by linear foot. Heads, valves, controllers and quick couplers by each.
• Hardscape by its own units. Pavers by area, bedding and aggregate base by cubic yard, edge restraint by linear foot, wall by face area.

Two things the obvious count misses. First, groundcover and perennials are usually not drawn as countable symbols. They are a hatch with a spacing note, and the count comes out of area and spacing, not off the plan. Triangular spacing at the same on-center dimension puts roughly 15 percent more plants in the same area than square spacing does, so read the planting detail before you divide. Second, the soils report that sets your amendment rate frequently does not exist at bid time. The spec says amend per the laboratory recommendations, and the laboratory has not been engaged yet. You cannot price an unknown rate, so price a stated rate, write it into the proposal as an assumption, and give a unit price per cubic yard so the adjustment after the test is arithmetic instead of an argument.

The establishment period is duration risk, not installation cost

The maintenance and establishment period is a length of time you owe after the landscape is accepted, and it is the line most often priced as if it were a small add.

• The clock usually starts at landscape substantial completion, which the landscape architect declares after a walk. A punch list of substitutions and rejected plants delays the start, and your crew keeps mowing and watering in the meantime.
• Season matters. A maintenance period that lands in a dry summer is a different cost than the same period in a wet spring, and if the general schedule slips you do not get to pick.
• Who pays for water during establishment is a real question with a real number attached. Find the answer in Division 1, not in the landscape spec.
• Plant warranty is separate from maintenance. One replacement of a dead plant at the specified size, in the correct season, is an installation crew mobilizing for a handful of units. Say how many replacement mobilizations your price includes.

What the GC checks when leveling landscape bids

Bid leveling is the GC normalizing every proposal to one scope. Write yours so it survives. Expect them to compare:

• Plant counts by species and size, against the schedule and against the other bidders.
• Whether finish grading and topsoil placement are in or out, and at what depth.
• Topsoil source, stockpile or imported, and who tests it.
• Irrigation point of connection: tap, meter, meter and permit fees, backflow assembly and enclosure, and the static pressure the design assumed.
• Sleeving under paving, and whether it is in your number.
• Hardscape line by line. Pavers, site walls, edging, fencing.
• Maintenance period duration and warranty duration, stated in months.
• Allowances you carried and for what.
• Unit prices, so they can price a bed change without re-bidding the package.

Silence gets filled with an assumption, and the assumption will not favour you.

Structure the proposal

1. The number, with the sections it covers and the plant count it is based on.
2. Inclusions, as items rather than a paragraph.
3. Exclusions, the same way. This is the most valuable page in the document.
4. Clarifications and assumptions. Subgrade elevation assumed, topsoil source and depth, amendment rate assumed pending the soils test, static pressure assumed at the POC, who pays for water, maintenance and warranty durations, sleeving window.
5. Unit prices for plants by size, topsoil and amendment by cubic yard, sod and seed by area, irrigation heads and valves by each, and extra maintenance by month.

Here is the gotcha worth the most on a job with paving: irrigation sleeves go in before the walks and drives are poured, which means an early mobilization tied to somebody else's schedule, weeks before your real start. Miss that window and you are boring under finished concrete at your own cost. Put the sleeving mobilization in the proposal as its own line with a required notice period, and price your markup on a cost you can defend line by line.

Where this fits

If you are running the takeoff itself, Ruh reads the drawing set, measures the scope, and prices the measured quantities against your own price book, with every line traceable back to the sheet it came from. That is exactly what you need when a GC asks why your plant count differs from the schedule.