Waterworks bids from the engineer's bid schedule, each pay item opened into pipe, valves and hydrants.

A bid schedule prices work in place, not products: water main by the foot, a fire hydrant assembly by the each. Your estimator turns those lines into a bill of material, picks products the specification and the utility's standards allow, prices them, and gets the quote to the contractor before the bid opens.

For the test, AI reads copies of past bid packages and drafts the material quote for each: pay item, the parts inside it, quantity, unit, your item number, price source and the standard each line answers to. Anything the documents leave open, such as which way a hydrant turns, goes on a short list for your estimator. No quote or bid leaves the building.

A pay item is an assembly. Sidney, Ohio's December 2022 bid tabulation for a water main replacement lists 10-inch AWWA C909 PVC main by the foot and a 6-inch fire hydrant assembly by the each, with storm and sanitary repairs in the same schedule and the engineer's estimate beside four contractors' prices. What an each holds is in the payment clause. Iowa's Section 5020 puts the hydrant, barrel extensions, anchoring pipe, fittings, thrust blocks, porous backfill and the hydrant's gate valve inside one assembly, but not a tapping valve, and puts the box and cover inside every valve. The draft opens each pay item into the parts its clause names.

The hydrant belongs to the city. Deer Park, Texas, wants an AWWA C502 dry-barrel hydrant with a main valve of at least 5-1/4 inches, two 2-1/2-inch hose nozzles and a 4-1/2-inch pumper on national standard threads, and a 1-1/2-inch pentagon nut, opening left, for 4-foot bury unless the plans say otherwise; its gate valves take 2-inch square nuts. The 2002 edition of Columbus, Ohio's specifications, still posted by the city, has hydrants opening right with a single 4-inch nozzle. Iowa's section leaves the nut, pumper nozzle, threads and main valve size to the local jurisdiction. The draft copies each setting from the job's own specification, and leaves a blank, never a default, where the documents say nothing.

The pipe's standard is part of its name. AWWA C900 covers PVC pressure pipe from 4 to 60 inches, and the dimension ratio sets the pressure class: 165 psi for DR25, 235 for DR18, 305 for DR14. C909 is another pipe, molecularly oriented PVC, under its own standard. In 2024 ASTM folded F679 into D3034 and withdrew it, so 18- to 60-inch sewer pipe is now named by stiffness, such as PS 46, while smaller sizes keep ratios like DR 35, and the Uni-Bell PVC Pipe Association says specifications citing F679 should be updated. The draft quotes what the specification names and marks any line citing a withdrawn standard for your estimator.

Federal money adds letters. EPA's American Iron and Steel requirement, from the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2014, is permanent for Clean Water State Revolving Fund projects, and any SRF money puts the whole project under it, pipe and valves included when they are mostly iron or steel by cost. EPA says a supplier may collect the manufacturers' certification letters, each naming the product, the city and state where it was made, the project, a signer and the requirement. Under the Build America, Buy America rules at 2 CFR 184, PVC counts as a construction material, and it counts as made in the United States only if every step from the first combining of its plastic inputs to its final form happened here. The draft lists the lines that need a letter and whether your files hold one; it never says a product qualifies.

Addenda change the answer. Plymouth, Michigan's 2024 advertisement says bidders must download the documents from QuestCDN to be on the plan holders list and receive addenda, and that a bid tabulation goes online soon after bids close. So the sample should hold bids with addenda, and the posted tabs show who won. Your reviewer, usually the waterworks estimator or branch manager, checks the parts in each pay item, the hydrant and valve settings, every pipe standard, the latest addendum and each line held back.

With a yes from your reviewer against the success criteria, the job drafts material quotes for new bid packages for about 30 days.

Your estimator checks and changes each draft before any contractor sees a price, spec and list questions still go to the person your owner named, and only your branch sends a quote.

The live month has a fixed price agreed before you sign. Any job after it is priced separately.