The documents to give bidders

On any job larger than a residential lot, the quality of the quotes you receive is set by the quality of the package you sent. Bidders working from different information produce prices you cannot compare, and every gap in the package is priced as risk by somebody.

Published by the Land Clearing Authority editorial team · Last revised 2026-07-29 · Editorial policy · Corrections

Who this is for

Owners and managers inviting more than two quotes
Anyone with a site large or complex enough for a written package
People whose clearing hands over to a following trade

The short answer

Send every bidder the same package. That single discipline is what converts several quotes into a comparison rather than a collection.

Eight items cover it: the objective, a site plan with zones marked, area and density figures, access dimensions, site history, protected features, the required completion condition, and the commercial terms you intend to use.

Include what you do not know. Areas nobody has inspected, structures of unknown capacity, ground nobody has dug. A stated unknown gets an allowance; an unstated one gets a defensive premium or a change order.

And state what you want back, in what form. A bid that answers your questions in your structure can be compared line by line; one that arrives as a paragraph and a number cannot.

What changes the answer

How many bidders you are inviting
Whether the site can be inspected fully before bidding
Whether a following trade depends on the completion condition
How much site history exists and how relevant it is
Whether the work will be phased

The eight items

Each one removes a specific class of guesswork. Omitting any of them means somebody is estimating it, and estimates carry margin.

The pre-bid package
Item	What it prevents
The objective, one sentence per zone	Bidders pricing different scopes
Site plan with zones and phases marked	Disagreement about extent
Area and density figures by zone	The densest area pricing the whole site
Access dimensions and route photographs	Mobilisation for a machine that cannot get in
Site history and previous use	Buried debris arriving as a variation
Protected features and no-go areas	Damage to systems nobody knew about
Required completion condition	A finished state nobody can verify
Commercial terms you intend to use	Renegotiating change orders and payment after selection

Stating the unknowns explicitly

This is the item owners are most reluctant about and it improves your bids rather than weakening them.

A bidder who is told that two acres could not be inspected, that a culvert’s capacity is unknown, and that the site was a farmyard until the 1980s can price those honestly — an allowance for the debris, a bridging arrangement for the culvert, a site visit for the uninspected ground.

A bidder who is not told either discovers it on site as a change order, or prices a contingency across the whole job to cover whatever they suspect. The second is invisible to you and generally larger than an honest allowance.

Listing what you do not know also tells bidders you have looked, which changes how the rest of the package is read.

The site history section

On commercial and rural sites this is frequently the most valuable page in the package, and assembling it costs an afternoon.

Historic aerial imagery shows previous structures, roadways, and disturbed areas invisible under current growth. Previous use tells a bidder what to expect — farmyards accumulate machinery and wire, roadside frontages accumulate dumping, former industrial ground raises questions belonging to an environmental professional.

Include what you have: images, dates, what you know of previous owners and uses, and anything you have found on the ground. Where the history raises a question you cannot answer, say so and say who you think should answer it.

Specifying what you want back

A bid form does not need to be elaborate. It needs to make the answers comparable.

A price per zone, not a single site total
The scope proposed for each zone, in their own words
What is excluded, itemised rather than boilerplate
Machine width, weight, and the attachment for the bulk of the work
Whether the crew will be continuously on site
Their proposed completion condition against yours
Their change-order and payment terms against yours
Two comparable jobs with a constraint like the hardest one on your site

Where the package meets the following trade

Where clearing hands over to earthworks or construction, the completion condition in your package is that trade’s starting condition — and they should see it before it goes out.

Ask the following contractor what they need the site to be like when they arrive, and put that in the clearing package as the required completion condition. It takes one conversation and it removes the most common variation claim on a sequenced site.

Where possible, invite the following contractor to comment on the clearing bids. They will spot a proposed scope that leaves them work they have not priced.

What a package cannot do

It cannot make bids binding on things nobody could see, and it does not remove the need for bidders to walk the site. On anything substantial the package shortens and focuses the visit rather than replacing it.

It also cannot establish approvals, boundaries, or the jurisdictional status of any part of the site. Those need local enquiry and, where the stakes are high, professional advice, and stating them as unknowns in the package is more honest than asserting them.

What it does is ensure every bidder is answering the same question, which is the only condition under which comparing their answers means anything.

What drives the cost

Cost drivers on this kind of project
Driver	Effect
Completeness of the package	Every gap is priced as risk by somebody
Disclosed unknowns	An allowance is usually cheaper than a hidden contingency
Zone-level pricing requested	Lets you phase or reduce scope after comparing
Completion condition specified	Prevents variation claims from the following trade
Commercial terms stated upfront	Removes a negotiation after selection

Common mistakes

Sending different information to different bidders
Omitting known site history because it seems unhelpful
Requesting a single site total rather than a price per zone
Writing a completion condition without asking the following trade
Leaving change-order and payment terms until after selection

Questions to ask a contractor

Is anything missing from this package that you need to price accurately?
Which of my stated unknowns would you want resolved before bidding?
Does the completion condition I have specified make sense to you?
Would you price any zone differently if it were bid separately?
Are my change-order and payment terms workable for you?

What to do next

Assemble the eight items and list every unknown explicitly
Ask the following trade what completion condition they need
Specify a price per zone and the answers you want back
Send the identical package to every bidder on the same day

Questions people actually ask

Is a pre-bid package overkill for a small job?

On a single-zone residential lot, yes — the documentation guide for owners covers it. The package approach earns its keep once there are multiple zones, several bidders, or a following trade.

Should I include a budget in the package?

Where the scope is fully specified, no — the only variable is price. Where the scope is flexible and your ceiling is not, stating a ceiling and asking what fits inside it produces more useful bids.

What if bidders ignore my bid form?

Ask again, and treat the response as information. A contractor unwilling to state machine width, exclusions, and a completion condition has told you something about how the job would be run.

Do I have to disclose everything I know?

Disclosing what you know produces better and more honest bids, and concealing a known problem generally costs more later than an allowance would have. What you cannot do is assert things you have not established.