Analyze proposals and new project plans

Review the contractor’s proposal for the new HVAC install and send annotated cost lines to Laura in procurement and to the project manager, Tomas, asking for their approval by next Monday — confirm the labor rate and contingency math are correct first.

Before I send my proposal review to Laura and the project team, make the savings and extra-risk items obvious: show total project delta up top, make labor versus materials subtotals findable, and flag any line items lacking vendor quotes or that exceed our standard unit rates.

I just opened the HVAC proposal and the ductwork lump-sum is 37% above our historical benchmark. I suspect either a scope change, a quoting error, or that I’m comparing different units, but I don’t know which. Given this uncertainty, what should I ask the vendor and what immediate checks do I run to diagnose the true cause before escalating to Clara the project director?

When we review proposals we repeatedly spend time recalculating vendor rates, reformatting quotes, and chasing missing backup, which delays approvals and hurts our negotiating position. What working habit or spreadsheet layout should I adopt so vendor rates are normalized on import, missing backups are automatically highlighted, and comparisons are clean?