Three slab quotes land: $38,400, $43,900 and $47,200. Most people believe they’re looking at a $8,800 decision. They’re actually looking at three different scopes wearing the same trade’s name — and until the scopes are levelled, the totals mean nothing.
Why totals lie
A quote’s total is the price of what’s written in it, not the price of your job. The gap between those two things is where owner-builders lose five figures, one “that wasn’t in my quote” at a time. The cheapest total is often the emptiest scope — the contractor isn’t necessarily dishonest, they’ve just priced the smallest defensible version of the job, knowing the rest arrives later as variations at post-contract rates.
The levelling method
Levelling is what commercial estimators do to every tender package, and it works unchanged at house scale:
- Build the master scope list. Take the most detailed quote and list every line item down a spreadsheet. Add anything the other quotes mention that it missed. This list — not any single quote — is the job.
- Price every quote against every line. Fill in each contractor’s price per line. Where a quote is silent, leave the cell blank. A blank is not “included” — a blank is “unpriced”.
- Send the blanks back. Ask each trade to price their blank lines. An honest contractor fills them in; evasion (“we’ll sort that on site”) is information too.
- Compare completed columns. Now the totals are the same job, and the real spread is usually a fraction of the apparent one — with a different winner than page one suggested.
Get the working spreadsheet — free for one trade package — from the quote-levelling tool page.
The five exclusion traps to hunt first
| Trap | What it looks like | What it costs later |
|---|---|---|
| Rock clause | “Excavation in other than natural soil excluded” | Rock is charged at machine day-rates + haulage |
| Pump hire | Silent on concrete pumping | $800–$1,500 per pour, several pours |
| Allowance lowballs | Tiles at $28/m², tapware at $600/bathroom | The gap, at retail, at selection time |
| Site access assumptions | “Clear level access assumed” | Crane or labour surcharges announced mid-job |
| Provisional sums | Big round numbers for siteworks | PS items reprice at cost-plus with no ceiling |
Allowances: where cheap quotes hide their cheapness
Prime cost (PC) and provisional sum (PS) items are legitimate tools — nobody can price your unchosen tiles. But they’re also the easiest place to make a total look small. The test is realism: a $28/m² tile allowance doesn’t survive contact with a tile shop, and the difference lands on you.
Benchmark every allowance against realistic ranges — the PC/PS benchmark tool does it in two minutes — then ask trades to re-quote unrealistic ones before signing. Watch the quote that resists.
Reading the contractor, not just the quote
- Itemises willingly, answers the blanks quickly → prices like someone who expects scrutiny.
- Big deposit request → run it through the deposit checker before anything moves.
- “We’ll sort it on site” as a recurring answer → that’s the variation pipeline being built in front of you.
- The quote that got more detailed when questioned is usually the one to shortlist, whatever its total.
When to get help
Levelling one trade package yourself is a Saturday. Levelling every major package across a whole build, against current market rates, while trades pressure you to sign — that’s the moment a $290 Quote Teardown pays for itself in the first finding.