Commercial evaluation is where the cost team turns bidder pricing into defensible award evidence. TruBuild helps commercial managers, QS teams, and procurement leads compare contractor priced submissions against the package basis, identify unpriced scope and pricing anomalies, and prepare commercial clarification items. This workflow is package-based. A package has contractors, technical/commercial weighting, assets, documents, commercial rounds, and eventually an award record.Documentation Index
Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.trubuild.io/llms.txt
Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.
Who this is for
| Role | Main responsibility in this workflow |
|---|---|
| Procurement manager | Confirms package setup, contractor list, weighting, and award evidence |
| Commercial lead | Owns the commercial round and final commercial position |
| QS / cost consultant | Reviews BOQ extraction, anomalies, exclusions, and pricing clarifications |
| Owner reviewer | Reviews commercial evidence and residual commercial risk |
What you need
| Input | Format | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Package | In-app setup | Must include at least two contractors |
| Reference BOQ or PTE | .xlsx, .xls, .csv, text-based .pdf | The commercial basis for comparison |
| Contractor priced submissions | .xlsx, .xls, .csv, text-based .pdf | Uploaded against each contractor |
| Assets | In-app setup | Optional commercial splits such as tower, zone, building, plot, or workstream |
What you get
- Package and asset-level commercial comparison
- Contractor totals and ranking context
- Line-item and asset-level spread analysis
- Flags for unpriced, excluded, deviated, anomalous, or arithmetically suspicious items
- Commercial PTC workspace grouped by contractor and category
- XLSX commercial comparison export for review and committee packs
Enterprise controls
| Control | Recommended owner | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Contractor list locked before upload | Procurement manager | Prevents comparing against the wrong bidder set |
| Package currency confirmed | Commercial lead | Avoids false bid deltas |
| Reference BOQ/PTE accepted | Commercial lead | Establishes the evaluation basis |
| Round named clearly | Commercial lead | Preserves evidence across submission and clarification cycles |
| PTCs reviewed by contractor | QS / commercial evaluator | Keeps commercial clarification evidence actionable |
| Export retained for committee | Procurement manager | Supports award recommendation and audit |
Where commercial evaluation fits in the tender cycle
Commercial evaluation usually starts after bid return, but it depends on work that should happen earlier in the procurement process:| Procurement stage | Commercial team activity in TruBuild |
|---|---|
| Tender preparation | Confirm package structure, currency, assets, contractor list, BOQ/PTE quality, and bidder return requirements |
| Initial submission | Upload contractor priced submissions and run Round 1 comparison |
| Compliance review | Check missing documents, unpriced scope, exclusions, qualifications, arithmetic issues, and abnormal spreads |
| Clarification/PTC cycle | Prepare commercial PTCs for each contractor and track responses through the package query process |
| Revised submission | Upload revised priced submissions and create the next commercial round |
| Award recommendation | Use the latest reviewed commercial round as the commercial basis for the award record |
Before TruBuild
The traditional commercial evaluation flow for a 6-bidder tender on a 1,000-line BOQ:Collect bids
5–6 vendor Excel / PDF submissions arrive over email, each with slightly different column orders, units, and formatting.
Build a master comparison sheet
A cost manager spends 3–5 days copy-pasting vendor prices into a master Excel next to the reference BOQ. Every vendor’s line order is different, so much of the time is spent lining things up.
Spot-check with formulas
Conditional formatting highlights cells above/below average. Formulas break every time someone inserts a row. Total spend per vendor often disagrees between the “summary” tab and the “detail” tab.
Manually identify outliers and queries
An analyst scrolls the sheet looking for suspicious numbers, typing them into a separate clarification tracker.
- The master sheet becomes the single source of truth — and a single bad cell can change the awarded vendor
- No audit trail — who changed line 347’s rate, and when?
- Version drift — “the final sheet” ends up as
Tender_Eval_v12_FINAL_FINAL_MK.xlsx - Re-running after clarifications effectively means redoing the work
With TruBuild
Same tender, same bids, same day:Upload contractor files
Each contractor’s priced submission is stored against the contractor so the round can compare the right files.
Review the results
Commercial evaluators review totals, unpriced scope, exclusions, deviations, anomalies, and arithmetic checks.
Step-by-step inside the app
1. Confirm the package
Before running a commercial round, confirm the package has:- A clear package name
- Correct currency
- At least two contractors
- The agreed technical/commercial weighting
- Appropriate commercial access for the evaluation team
2. Upload the reference BOQ or PTE
Confirm header detection
TruBuild auto-detects the header row. If it picked the wrong row, click Remap and select the correct one.
Confirm column mapping
Columns should map to item description, unit, quantity, rate, and amount where present.
3. Define assets when required
If your BOQ splits scope across multiple buildings and you want per-asset totals, add assets (e.g., Tower A, Tower B, Tower C). The commercial comparison will show per-asset subtotals per vendor. This is purely optional — if every vendor prices globally, skip it.4. Add contractor submissions
Confirm contractor slots
Contractors are created at package setup and can be extended by package leads.
Upload their priced BOQ
Drop each contractor file against the correct contractor. Keep revised round files separate from initial submissions.
Fix unmatched lines
Review unmatched, missing, excluded, and anomalous lines before relying on the comparison.
5. Create a commercial round
Each commercial round is a named package-level snapshot of contractor prices and analysis. Commercial rounds let you run initial submission, receive clarifications, and run a post-clarification commercial round without losing the prior evidence.Confirm included contractors
Confirm the contractor list and uploaded files before starting the run.
6. Run the analysis
Click Run. The processing screen shows a five-stage pipeline:7. Statistics you’ll see
| Stat | Meaning | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Lowest bid | Minimum unit price across contractors | Starting point for award or negotiation |
| Average bid | Mean price across contractors | Rough market benchmark |
| Spread | Max − Min (also as % of average) | High spread = market uncertainty or scope ambiguity |
| Outliers | Prices >25% from mean | Likely mispricing or scope misread |
| Missing items | Lines a contractor didn’t price | Immediate clarification |
| Zero-priced items | Lines priced at 0 | Check: intentional or error? |
| Per-asset split | Totals per asset | Useful for phased awards and cash-flow modelling |
8. The line-by-line comparison
The core screen is a wide comparison table:- Rows — every reference BOQ line
- Columns — contractor prices side by side, plus the stats
- Highlights — outliers in red, lowest bid in green, missing in gray
- Click a cell to investigate the source line in the contractor’s original document where available
9. Overrides and notes
Evaluators can:- Override a contractor’s extracted price if parsing got it wrong. Overrides should be explained in notes.
- Add a note per line item — visible to other evaluators, persisted across rounds.
- Mark a line “for clarification” to seed the draft clarifications list.
10. Prepare commercial PTCs
Commercial PTCs are contractor-specific clarification items generated from the commercial comparison and reviewed by the commercial team.Review proposals
Review exclusions, unpriced items, deviations, pricing anomalies, and arithmetic checks.
11. Export
Click Export on the round. You get:| Output | Contents |
|---|---|
| Excel comparison | Full line-by-line table with stats |
| XLSX comparison | Full comparison table for package review |
| PTC working list | Contractor-specific commercial clarification items |
Running Round 2 after clarifications
Update contractor prices
Upload the revised priced submission from any contractor that responded to clarification.
Commercial round types
| Round type | When to use it | What to review |
|---|---|---|
| Initial submission | First priced return from contractors | Completeness, totals, major exclusions, obvious pricing gaps |
| Clarification response | Contractor replies to commercial PTCs | Whether the answer resolves the issue or changes the evaluated price |
| Revised submission | Contractor submits a revised BOQ or commercial offer | Movement from prior round, newly priced scope, changed qualifications |
| Final offer / BAFO | Shortlisted contractor submits a final commercial position | Final total, residual exclusions, compliance with equal-treatment process |
Best practices
Always insist on the Excel template in your RFP pack
Always insist on the Excel template in your RFP pack
Every hour you invest forcing a clean template saves three hours of alignment fixing.
Sort by spread first, not by total
Sort by spread first, not by total
Big totals aren’t what wins or loses a tender — big deltas do. A line with high spread is where the market disagrees, and where your evaluator’s judgment matters most.
Use rounds for every clarification cycle
Use rounds for every clarification cycle
Don’t overwrite Round 1 with Round 2 data. Keep the history.
Lock rounds before sharing with committees
Lock rounds before sharing with committees
Locked rounds are read-only and can be exported; unlocking is logged. Prevents “someone changed a number after the committee signed off.”
Watch the provisional sum and contingency lines
Watch the provisional sum and contingency lines
These are consistent sources of misalignment — vendors interpret them differently. Clean labels in your reference BOQ save a lot of noise.
Validation checks on the reference BOQ
TruBuild runs automatic checks on every uploaded BOQ:| Check | What it catches |
|---|---|
| Totals match | amount ≠ quantity × rate on any line |
| Unit consistency | Same-description items with different units |
| Zero quantities | Lines with quantity 0 |
| Duplicate codes | Same BOQ code appearing multiple times |
| Missing units | Rate-priced lines with no unit specified |