You know the drill. Three bids come in, each with its own format, scope assumptions, and buried costs. You open a blank spreadsheet and rebuild the job just to compare totals that do not line up. The risk is not the math. It is the gaps. Allowances sit in different places, exclusions do not match, and fee loads skew the apparent low. This task removes that friction and makes the comparison honest. Due Diligence ~15 min to run Level Contractor Bids Vic prompt Use Vic to level these three contractor bids for the 120,000 sf industrial shell build. Purpose Cuts review time from roughly 120 minutes to 15 minutes and lowers the chance of awarding work with hidden scope gaps or unbalanced loads. Inputs Bids Required Scope Of Work Optional Owners Estimate Optional Property Type Optional Outputs An Excel workbook with side-by-side normalized totals, separate blocks for allowances, alternates, unit prices, and loads, a gaps-and-exclusions matrix, and a short recommendation that identifies the low qualified bid. Time saved Cuts review time from roughly 120 minutes to 15 minutes. How it works Hand Vic the contractor bids. If you have them, include a scope of work, an owner’s estimate, and the property type. Then run: Use Vic to level these three contractor bids for the 120,000 sf industrial shell build. Vic converts each proposal into a common structure so you can see true side by side totals. The workbook breaks out base costs, then separates allowances, alternates, and unit prices into their own blocks. It also shows general conditions, fee, insurance, and bond loads so you can see how each contractor carries overhead and risk. The output is an Excel file built for review, not decoration. You get normalized totals aligned to a consistent scope, with clean number formatting and consistent categories. A gaps and exclusions matrix flags where a bidder carved something out or assumed it sits elsewhere. That is where most surprises hide, and where a quick review tends to miss things. Vic also weighs schedule and qualifications in the comparison. The result is not just the lowest number. It is a short recommendation that points to the low qualified bid based on what is included, what is not, and how the loads are set. This matters when bids cluster. A contractor can look low because key scope sits in allowances or because fee and general conditions are light relative to peers. Once normalized, those differences show up right away. You can press a bidder on a specific gap instead of arguing about totals. It also matters when bids spread. If one number is far off, the workbook makes it clear whether that comes from scope, unit pricing, or a load issue. You do not spend time reverse engineering each proposal to find the reason. For acquisition teams, this keeps underwriting tied to a defendable construction number. For development managers and project executives, it shortens the path to award and lowers the chance of buying a problem that shows up during buyout. The time savings are straightforward. What used to take about two hours of manual leveling drops to about fifteen minutes to run and review. More important, the decision is cleaner. You are choosing between comparable scopes with the loads and gaps in the open, not buried in three different PDFs.