Tendering & bidding glossary
Plain-language definitions of the terms engineering and bid teams meet in a live tender — defined precisely, with worked examples and the US/UK/AU variations.
BAFO (best and final offer)
BAFO (best and final offer) is a buyer's formal, late-stage request for shortlisted bidders in a competitive tender to submit one final, revised offer (sharpened price, confirmed terms and answered clarifications) after which no further changes are accepted.
ITP vs ITC
An inspection and test plan (ITP) is the document that plans the quality checks for a scope of work, listing each inspection and test, its acceptance criteria, its hold and witness points and who is responsible; an inspection and test checklist (ITC) is the completed record that evidences those checks were actually carried out, capturing the date, the result, any defect and the sign-offs. In short, the ITP is the plan and the ITC is the proof: one ITP defines the inspections, and each time the work is built it generates the ITCs (also called inspection and test records, ITRs) that show the plan was followed.
PE stamp (professional engineer seal)
A PE stamp (also called a PE seal) is the mark a licensed Professional Engineer applies to an engineering document, with their signature and state license number, certifying that they prepared or directly supervised the work and take legal responsibility for it. A US bid needs a PE stamp when the engineering deliverables will be submitted for a building permit or other government or utility approval, or are otherwise offered to the public, in which case they must be sealed by a PE licensed in the state where the project is located. Many states also apply an industrial exemption that lets a company's own employees engineer its own products and facilities without a seal, so not every engineered deliverable in a bid has to be stamped.
Price book
A price book is a maintained library of unit rates an estimator prices from, holding a cost for each defined unit of work (and often the labor, material and equipment that make up that cost), so a new estimate is built by pulling proven rates rather than deriving every price from scratch. It is also called a rate library, cost library, pricing database or, in US construction, a unit price book (UPB). A price book can be a company's own rates distilled from past jobs, or a published commercial dataset such as RSMeans; either way it is the single source of truth for what a unit of work costs, kept current so every bid starts from the same trusted numbers.
Returnable schedule
A returnable schedule is a structured form a buyer issues with a tender that the bidder must complete and return as part of their submission, capturing one part of the response (price, technical compliance, capability, or supporting evidence) in the exact format the buyer will evaluate.
RFI vs clarification vs departure vs qualification
An RFI, a clarification, a departure and a qualification are four different exchanges in a tender, and they are not interchangeable. An RFI (request for information) is a question raised to close an information gap, either a buyer's pre-tender approach to the market or a bidder's formal query about the tender documents during the bid period. A clarification is an explanation of something already stated, given without changing the offer: the buyer's answer to bidders' questions, or the buyer's request that a bidder explain part of a submitted bid. A departure is a stated non-compliance against a specific clause or specification, recording exactly where your offer does not meet what was asked. A qualification is a condition you attach to your offer that changes the basis of your price, such as an exclusion, an assumption or a limit of liability. The short test: an RFI asks, a clarification explains, a departure declares non-compliance against a clause, and a qualification changes what your price actually covers.
RPEQ sign-off
RPEQ sign-off is the certification of an engineering deliverable by a Registered Professional Engineer of Queensland (RPEQ), the engineer who then carries professional and legal responsibility for it. An Australian tender needs RPEQ sign-off when the professional engineering services are carried out in or for Queensland, which is a statutory requirement under the Professional Engineers Act 2002 (Qld), or when the contract or specification calls for it as a condition of the deliverables. Under that Act, anyone providing a professional engineering service in or for Queensland must either be registered as an RPEQ or work under the direct supervision of one.
SDRL (supplier data requirements list)
An SDRL (supplier data requirements list) is the buyer-issued list, attached to a tender or purchase order, of every document and data deliverable a supplier must produce alongside the physical scope, with each line carrying a title, a document-type code, the required format, the review class it needs, and the milestone or date it is due by. It is the contractual master checklist of a supplier's paperwork obligations; the same list is often written as a VDRL or VDR (vendor data requirements list), and the supplier's reply committing to deliver each item is the supplier document list (SDL).
Submittals
Submittals are documents a contractor provides for the design team to review during a project, proving that the materials, equipment and methods it will use comply with the contract: in US construction the term most precisely covers post-award shop drawings, product data and samples. At bid time, the forms a bidder must complete and return are usually called bid forms, proposal forms or exhibits, which are the US counterpart to what Australian and UK tenders call returnable schedules.
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