A public roof gets bid twice: once on paper, and again in the field when the deck turns out to be worse than the plans say. The way to keep the second bid small is to write the first one with unit prices. A public project has to match the city's published criteria, including the 60 psf snow load and the 24 inch frost line. Send us the plans and the sheet. We return a base scope, priced alternates and unit prices for wet insulation and deck repair.
The call: unit prices for what you cannot see
You do not know how much of the insulation is wet until the roof is open. A lump-sum bid hides that. The owner either pays a contingency up front or fights a change order later. A bid with a unit price per square foot of wet insulation replaced, and per linear foot of deck repair, fixes both problems.
The public owner sees the exact price of the unknown before award, and the contractor is not forced to guess high. We write those unit prices into every public-sector bid and tie them to a core and a moisture survey done before the documents go out. The survey costs little compared with one change order. Typical unit lines: wet insulation removed and replaced, deck panels replaced, tapered insulation added at a pond, and curbs raised to clear a drift. Each line has a quantity guess, a unit price and a cap, and the owner sees the worst case before signing.
What it costs: documents, schedule and the hold point
Public work carries paperwork that private work skips: submittals, product data, inspection records and a closeout package. Price it. A hold point, which is a stop where the owner or an inspector signs off before the next layer goes down, adds a day here and there and prevents buried defects.
City and county buildings also run on public calendars. Council meetings, fiscal years and budget hearings set when money exists, so the schedule starts with the award date and not the contractor's best weather. We put the award date, the material lead time and the snow window in one schedule, and we show what slips if award slips.
What the code sheet says: one sheet, checked at submittal
The City of Coeur d'Alene Building Services publishes a single sheet of adopted codes and design criteria that commercial roof submittals are checked against. Weathering is rated severe there, and ice barrier underlayment is required. The statewide 2018 building and energy codes apply as well.
We read the sheet before pricing. Ice barrier at eaves is a line item. A heavier edge-metal and fastener pattern for 115 mph is a line item. A structural check for a recover under 60 psf is a line item. A public bid that leaves those out gets a change order; one that includes them gets a fair comparison between bidders.
Wind deserves its own sentence. A perimeter fastening pattern is cheap to specify and expensive to retrofit after a storm. If the plans show the minimum, price the upgrade as an alternate and let the owner see what the extra row of fasteners buys.
Where it fails first: skylights, bays and low-slope drains
Public buildings have features that private ones skip: apparatus bays with large doors, skylights over lobbies, long low-slope sections over offices and courtrooms. Skylights fail first. Next come the drains over long corridors, which freeze, and the parapet flashing at tall lobbies.
Essential buildings, such as a fire station or a dispatch center, cannot go dark. A leak over dispatch equipment is a service problem, not just a repair. The same goes for a public works shop or a library branch, where a wet ceiling closes a public room and residents hear about the closure before the repair is scheduled. Keep a short repair list and a standing call-out price for those days. We map the critical rooms on the roof plan, mark drains and penetrations above them and schedule the work so those rooms stay protected. Rebuilt skylight and penetration flashing with raised curbs ends most of those leaks.
Alternates: recover, cover board and a longer warranty term
Break out what the owner may want to drop or add. A roof recover and overlay against a full tear-off. A cover board for hail. A heavier membrane. A longer manufacturer program term, where the system offers one. Each is a priced alternate with its tradeoff in a sentence.
Public owners benefit from seeing the whole range, since the cheapest alternate is not always the lowest life-cycle cost. A school-district gym runs on the same logic as any school roof, and so does a recreation center, which brings the pool-hall vapor questions of a fitness center. The unit prices carry over from one building to the next, which is why a county or city with several roofs gets a lower per-building cost when the bids are packaged. Package the survey, the design and the bid documents once, and reuse them.
Schedule and snow window: award in winter, tear-off in summer
Kootenai County had 171,362 residents in 2020, the third most in Idaho, and an agency with buildings from Rathdrum to the Silver Valley works across a snow gradient: Kellogg averages about 52.4 inches a year and Wallace about 75.6. Snow gets heavier as you go east, and the work window shrinks with it.
Award the contract by late winter. Rathdrum, Hayden and Post Falls projects all pull from the same pool of crews, so the early award is also the one that gets a crew. Material lead times add weeks, and the dry months are few. A public roof awarded in July will not finish in dry weather. Put the dry-in date and the material ship date in the contract as hold points, so a slip is visible the day it happens.
Closeout: a package the next facilities manager can use
Closeout delivers the as-built roof diagram, product data, photographs of every seam, flashing and drain, the core and moisture results, the punch list and the maintenance schedule. A fall drain check and a spring ice check go on the calendar. The package feeds a roof capital planning cycle, so the next replacement is budgeted before it becomes an emergency, and the survey results give a council or a county board a defensible reason to rank one building ahead of another when the budget cannot cover all of its roofs in the same year. The same package is what an auditor or a council member asks for when a roof line shows up in a budget hearing, and it answers the question without a site visit.
Commercial Roofing Questions
Why use unit prices on a public roof?
Because wet insulation and bad deck cannot be seen before tear-off. Unit prices set the cost of the unknown in the bid and avoid a change-order fight.
Does the city design sheet apply to every public building?
It governs commercial roof submittals within the city. We read it first and price its snow, wind, frost and ice barrier requirements as separate lines.
How do you protect critical rooms during the work?
We mark them on the roof plan, dry in daily and schedule work above them for low-risk hours. Equipment rooms get temporary covers.
Can a recover be bid next to a tear-off?
Yes. As alternates, with the structural check and core results behind the recover. The owner compares price and life-cycle cost.
What does the closeout package include?
The roof diagram, product data, photographs, core results, punch list and a maintenance schedule.