Package 05
Institutional & public work
Work for public and institutional owners, where the procurement is public, the bid tabulation is a published document, and the occupancy date is set by somebody else’s calendar.
Typical span 10–28 months
05The work
Public and institutional work is the one place where the argument this site makes is already conceded, because on a public project the bid tabulation is a published document. Everybody’s number, side by side, in the open.
Which has an interesting effect: it makes the procurement question impossible to avoid. An owner looking at a public bid tab can see immediately that two bidders are eleven per cent apart and ask why, and the answer is almost never "one of them is better at building". It is that they bought differently, carried different allowances, or read an ambiguous specification section in different directions.
The other defining feature is the calendar. Institutional buildings open when an institution says they open — a term, a season, a fiscal year, a move-in coordinated months in advance. Construction fits into the gap, the gap does not move, and on an occupied campus that gap is frequently a summer.
And the money is public, which brings its own machinery: competitive sealed bidding or best-value selection, prequalification, bonding, prevailing wage and certified payroll on some funding sources, retainage governed by statute, open-records exposure, and a governing body that has to approve things at a meeting that happens once a month.
A public bid tab tells you who was cheapest. It does not tell you why, and the why is the part that predicts your project. Ask each bidder for their allowance list and their stated contingency. A number eleven per cent lower with two fewer allowances and no contingency is the same number with the risk moved onto the owner, and on a public project that risk lands on a budget that was approved in public.
Establish these first
- The procurement method
- Hard bid, best value, CM/GC or design-build. Your own code and funding source frequently decide it before anybody has an opinion.
- The funding source
- Because it decides whether prevailing wage, certified payroll and specific reporting apply, and those are priced rather than absorbed.
- The immovable date
- A term, a season, a move-in. And what happens if it is missed, because that is usually not a liquidated-damages question but an operational one.
- Occupancy during construction
- Whether the facility keeps operating, and what separation, access control and background screening that requires.
- The approval calendar
- When your board or council meets. A decision that waits four weeks for a meeting is four weeks of schedule, and it belongs in the programme.
What you receive
Bid tabulation, certified payroll, schedule of values, commissioning record, closeout
In the format your records require, agreed at the start rather than discovered at closeout. The full list is on closeout and what you receive.
05.1Coverage
Who will actually bid this
Typical coverage for a project of this kind in the Denver metro. The full register, with every trade and the reasoning behind each count, is on the bid coverage page.
| Trade | Typical coverage | What it means for your number |
|---|---|---|
| General contractors bidding the project | 3–6 | On a public hard bid, published in the tabulation |
| Earthwork & utilities | 4 bidders | Healthy |
| Concrete | 4 bidders | Healthy |
| Masonry | 3 bidders | Adequate, and common on institutional buildings |
| Roofing | 3 bidders | Adequate |
| Mechanical | 3 bidders | Adequate. Commissioning requirements narrow it |
| Electrical | 3 bidders | Adequate. Prevailing wage narrows it further |
| Fire protection | 2 bidders | Thin |
| Specialty systems | 1 bidder thin | Frequently sole source, specified by the owner’s standard |
Coverage is a count and a word, never a colour. A trade with one bidder is marked thin in text, so this table reads identically in black and white, in print, and to a screen reader.
05.2Gaps
Where the money goes on this kind of project
Two honest bids that do not quite meet. Each is findable on one afternoon at levelling, and each is expensive once a crew is standing in it.
- Caught at bid
- $0 — defined in the specification
- Found in the field
- $8,000 – $40,000 of unbudgeted labour at startup
- Caught at bid
- $1,500 – $7,000
- Found in the field
- $12,000 – $45,000, and it delays occupancy
The pattern never changes: two trades, one scope, two exclusions pointing at each other. The only thing that catches it is somebody reading both blocks before either contract is signed. Reading an exclusions block explains what to look for.
05.3Budget
What this costs
Planning ranges, wide on purpose. The full set with every package on it, and the soft costs that sit on top of any construction number, is on the budgets page.
| Item | Building type | Unit | Range |
|---|---|---|---|
| 05.10 | Municipal or administrative building Finished to occupancy | SF | $380–$620 |
| 05.20 | Community or recreation facility Excluding pools and specialist equipment | SF | $420–$720 |
| 05.30 | Education, classroom addition Finished to occupancy, on an existing campus | SF | $400–$680 |
| 05.40 | Maintenance or operations facility Shop, storage, limited office | SF | $210–$390 |
| 05.50 | Renovation, occupied institutional Phased around an operating facility | SF | $230–$470 |
| 05.60 | Prevailing wage premium Where the funding source requires it | PCT | 8%–22% |
| 05.70 | Commissioning support Contractor’s labour, where specified | LS | $12,000–$70,000 |
Units are SF square foot of the area being built, SQ roofing square (100 SF), EA each, LS lump sum, PCT a percentage of construction cost. A line reading “site visit” is one that genuinely cannot be priced from a web page.
Figures are USD planning ranges for commercial construction in the Denver metro. They exclude land, design and engineering fees, permit and tap fees, furnishings and equipment, and any applicable tax, and assume normal site conditions and a buildable season. Bid coverage counts are typical for this market and this building type, not a promise about your project. They are published so an owner can size a project, and ask better questions, before there is a drawing to price. They are planning figures, not a bid. Reviewed October 2026. A price for your project comes from a proposal against a defined scope. See the disclaimer.
05.4Questions
Questions about this package
Specific to this kind of work. The general ones — contracts, pay applications, retainage, change orders, insurance, bonding — are on the FAQ page.
Do you bid publicly advertised work?
Yes. Send the invitation or point us at the advertisement. We would rather look at the documents early than on the last day of the bid period, because a specification section that two trades will read in opposite directions can still be clarified by addendum at that point rather than argued about after award.
What does prevailing wage actually do to a number?
It raises the labour component, it narrows the field of subcontractors willing to bid, and it adds certified payroll reporting to every pay application. The band on the table above is wide because it depends entirely on how labour-intensive the scope is. What matters is that it is priced openly as its own line rather than buried, so the owner can see what the requirement costs them.
How do you handle an occupied campus?
Separation, access control, and a phasing plan written around the institution’s calendar rather than around the construction sequence. Where a facility operates with the public or with children present, screening and badging requirements apply to every subcontractor and are a real constraint on which firms will bid — which is itself a coverage question and belongs in the bid list conversation, not in a surprise at award.
What is retainage on a public project in Colorado?
Governed by statute rather than by negotiation, along with prompt-payment requirements. Those provisions exist to protect the owner and the subcontractors, they override anything a contractor would otherwise propose, and we would not suggest otherwise. The commercial detail is in the payment and cancellation policy.
00The rest
The other four packages
Building the budget and the bid list before there is a drawing to price. This is where a commercial project is actually won or lost, and it is the one phase most owners are never invited into.
- You receive
- Budget by division, a bid list by trade with expected coverage, a levelled scope matrix
Ground-up commercial buildings in the Denver metro — offices, retail, flex and light industrial — bought as about thirty subcontracts and levelled against each other before any of them is awarded.
- You receive
- Full drawing set, schedule of values, levelled subcontracts, closeout package
Fitting out a shell or a second-generation space against a lease date somebody has already signed. Fewer trades than a new building, and proportionally more gaps between them.
- You receive
- Permit set, landlord sign-offs, certificate of occupancy, closeout package
Expanding or rebuilding a building somebody is still working in. The phasing plan is the project, and the gaps are worse because half the scope is against existing construction nobody has opened yet.
- You receive
- Permit set, phasing plan, schedule of values, closeout package
Send us a bid you have already received
If you are holding subcontract bids and the numbers do not sit right, read the exclusions blocks to us on the telephone and we will tell you what is missing between them. It costs nothing, it takes about twenty minutes, and it is useful whether or not you ever hire us.
Pinkard Construction Co. · 9195 W 6th Ave, Lakewood, CO 80215