How should I structure a pricing schedule for tenders?

The schedule's job is to make the returns comparable and a thin price visible, so structure it around the levelling you will do later rather than a single bottom line. Break the works into sections that match how you will assess and pay, ideally the same lines your bills or the main contract's pricing document use, so a tender reads straight across against the works. Keep preliminaries and attendances on their own lines rather than buried in the rates, because that is where the incomparable assumptions hide and separating them forces each tenderer to state their position. Ask for rates and quantities, not just line totals, so the arithmetic can be checked and a rate too keen to survive contact with the work stands out before you place the order. Include provisional or defined quantities where the design is not settled, so a tenderer cannot win on an optimistic guess about something you have not yet fixed. Leave a clearly marked place for qualifications, so exclusions are declared in the schedule rather than smuggled into a covering letter. Built this way, the schedule turns tender analysis into a levelling exercise it supports, and tells you where each price is fragile before you commit.

Picture a main contractor buying a roofing package who sends out a schedule with three lines, strip, cover and flashings, each wanting a lump sum. The returns are technically comparable and completely uninformative: one number per line, no way to see why the cheapest is cheap. The rebuilt schedule breaks the cover into areas and details, asks for rates against measured quantities, and separates the access and mansafe as their own lines. Now the returns speak: one low total is a keen rate on a large area that will need remeasuring, another priced the access at a fraction because they assumed the scaffold was provided, and a third's arithmetic does not add up. The contractor puts three questions, firms up the two soft prices, and buys a number that holds. The schedule did the analysis.