Handy XP / When To Call Somebody, And Who

What A Quote Should Tell You, And Why You Want Several

A quote is a document about scope, not only about money.

Read a quote for its scope before you read it for its number. What exactly is included. What is explicitly excluded. What happens if something unexpected is found once work begins. Who is responsible for access, for clearing the space, for removing what comes out. How long the work is expected to take, and whether that means elapsed days or working days. A quote that answers those questions is the product of somebody who has thought about the job. A quote that answers none of them is a hope with a total attached.

This is also why more than one is worth the trouble, and the reason is not primarily bargaining. Different quotes reveal different understandings of the same problem, and when two people describe the job in materially different terms, that difference is information. It may mean one has seen something the other has not, or that they are solving different problems. Either way you have learned something you could not have learned from a single opinion, and you can ask better questions of both.

Comparison is only meaningful when the descriptions are comparable, which loops back to how you presented the problem in the first place. Give everybody the same account, the same photographs and the same history, and the differences you see are real rather than artefacts of your own inconsistency. Take your time on anything that is not urgent, and treat pressure to decide immediately as information about the person rather than about the job.