Paving bid schedules, read into a draft bid sheet for your estimator.

Before an estimator prices a street program, someone has to read the whole package: every pay item with its unit and quantity, which mix goes where, how deep the mill runs, what the traffic rules allow, how the contract counts time, and what each addendum changed. Most of those answers sit in a different document from the line they affect.

In the test, AI reads copies of those documents and drafts the bid sheet: each pay item and quantity exactly as stated, the mix designation, milling depth, traffic control and working-day limits that apply to it, each with its page, plus a separate list of places where the schedule and the provisions disagree. It writes no price and settles no conflict. Your reviewer checks the draft against the sheet your team used.

Every agency names the mix its own way. Bridgeport, West Virginia's 2024 schedule buys Marshall HMA Wearing 1, PG64S-22, at 1.5 inches, by the ton. Tampa's fiscal 2024-25 program lists FDOT Type SP 12.5 and SP 9.5. Normal, Illinois' 2026 street program sets a Polymerized HMA Binder Course, IL-4.75, N50 beside an HMA Surface Course, Mix C, N50. Conway, Arkansas' 2017 annual bid names only the binder grade on its form and leaves the 3/8-inch maximum aggregate to the text, which also says one of its two priced grades needs the city engineer's prior approval on certain streets. The draft copies each designation word for word and never translates one state's code into another's.

A milling line says less than it seems to. Tampa splits cold milling into two depth bands by the square yard, up to 1.5 inches and over 1.5 to 3.0 inches, then adds a per-each item to mill and resurface areas under 5,000 square yards. Conway's text calls for 1.5 inches below the gutter across the full width or as a 7-foot edge mill, as the city engineer directs, and its 2-inch overlay then lands exactly on the half inch above the gutter that the same page allows. Who keeps the millings moves the unit price too. Conway and Bridgeport keep them and have you haul them to a named city yard, while North Carolina's asphalt manual says that in most cases where milling is specified the contractor keeps the material. The sheet puts depth, width, measurement and the millings' destination on one line.

Some of the work has no line at all. Bridgeport's schedule has four items: mobilization, milling, the wearing course and tack. Its provisions still require advance warning signs and flaggers, temporary tape until striping, and one compaction test a day that the contractor procures, and its proposal form says every cost has been absorbed in a bid item. Tack alone shows up three ways across these packages: by the gallon in Bridgeport, by the pound in Normal, and in Conway not paid at all because it is subsidiary to the asphalt. Traffic rules scatter the same way. Bridgeport bars work from 7 to 8 a.m. and 2:30 to 3:30 p.m. while school is in session and wants 48 hours' notice of a closure, and Conway needs approval before any temporary lane closure. Maine's maintenance of traffic provision holds a one-lane restriction to 4,000 feet for milling and paving work areas unless the contract says otherwise, and wants a temporary centerline on new pavement each day. The draft lists each of these under the item that carries its cost, or marks it as having no item.

The clock is written in several places. Maine's pavement preservation provision doesn't count weekends, holidays, November 15 through April 15, or a day when weather stops seven hours of weather-dependent work. Conway gave each bid item 14 calendar days from its start and all the work until November 1. Bridgeport bars starting before June 1, wants completion by October 31, limits the gap between milling and paving to two weeks, charges liquidated damages per working day past completion, and applies the same charge per day to a late gap. Those last two don't use the same unit, which is the kind of difference the sheet hands to your estimator. An addendum can change all of it: in 2021 a Maine DOT intersection project added its limitations of operations and its calendar-day contract time by amendment two days before bids, after a bidder asked whether those provisions had been left out.

Who wins when the documents disagree depends on the agency. Indiana's provision on coordinating documents, adopted in 2022, puts the instructions to bidders and the pay item descriptions above the pre-bid question and answer form, that form above unique special provisions, and those above the plans. It also says a plan note about payment doesn't govern over the specifications unless it also appears in the special provisions or the general notes, and that no one may take advantage of an apparent error and the engineer must be told at once. A 2025 Florida DOT training deck ranks special provisions first and standard specifications last. So the draft cites the clause when the package includes one, shows both passages, and stops there. Your reviewer will check whether it caught every conflict your estimator caught and whether it invented any. None of this is legal or engineering advice; your contract and your own advisors control.

With your reviewer's yes, new bid packages get the same draft sheet for about 30 days.

Your estimator approves every bid, and no draft goes anywhere without that person reading it first.

Bids still leave the way your office sends them today. A next job would be a separate decision with its own price, and monthly support once it runs.