Commercial Glazing: From Bid to Closeout

Commercial glass work is a different business from residential, even when the glass is the same. You bid one building to three or four general contractors and only one of them wins. The architect has to approve your shop drawings before you order anything. The work changes halfway through and every change needs paperwork. You bill every month against an agreed breakdown of the contract, the contractor holds back 10% until the end, and every payment is traded for a lien waiver. The job isn't over until the warranty letter, the manuals and the retainage are in.

Commercial Glazing runs that whole contract. It's built on Flat Glass: the same piece builder, price list, ordering, shop cut list and install checklist. What it adds is the commercial paperwork around them.

You need the Flat Glass and Commercial Glazing add-ons on your plan. Commercial Glazing sits inside Glass in your left menu, next to Flat Glass. If it isn't there, contact us.

How it fits together

• A project is the building: "Harbor View Apartments, Portsmouth NH", with its owner, architect and bid date.
• A bid is your price to one general contractor. Each bid is its own job, on that contractor's account, with its own takeoff and estimate. Four contractors means four bids on one project.
• The award. When one contractor gives you the work, that bid becomes the contract. The other bids close as lost by themselves.

The contract then moves through these steps:

Takeoff → Estimate → Bid & award → Submittals → Glass → Shop → Schedule → Install → Punch list → Pay apps → Closed

Any step from Submittals to Punch list can be switched off under Steps you use in the settings. Switch off Shop if you never cut glass yourself, for example.

Setting it up

Open Commercial Glazing → Projects, then Settings (administrators only). It's also under Workflows → Commercial Glazing Settings.

Pricing comes from your Flat Glass price list. Set that up first: see Setting up your glass price list.

1. The project and its bids

On Projects, press New project and fill in the Project name, Location, Bids due date, Owner and Architect, then Create project.

Next, Bid it to a contractor: search for the general contractor and press Start the bid. The contractor has to be one of your customers already; add them as a customer first if they're new. Each bid opens as its own job on that contractor's account.

Do the takeoff once. Build the openings and price them on the first bid. Then Bid to another contractor for each of the others: the takeoff and price are copied from a bid that's still open, so you only adjust what's different. Tick Start blank instead of copying… only when a contractor has sent you different drawings.

Price each bid on its own. Contractors aren't the same: one pays in 30 days, another in 90 and makes you chase it. A copied bid starts with the first bid's prices; if this contractor has a payer agreement, Re-price from the price list on the Estimate step applies it.

The Projects page keeps track: Out to bid, Awarded, Lost and Closed tabs, with tiles for Bids due this week (late ones in red), Awarded contracts and Retainage held.

If you pull out of one bid, Withdraw it from the project; its job is cancelled and the project stays open for the others. If the building goes to another glazier, We lost this project closes every open bid. Say who got it and why. A year of those notes tells you where you're losing on price.

2. Takeoff and estimate

The takeoff is the Flat Glass Openings step under another name. Add one opening per elevation or piece on the drawings, using the drawing's own marks (SF1, W12) so your estimate, your orders and the contractor's drawings all speak the same language. The estimate prices each opening by the square foot, with its fabrication and labor, exactly as Flat Glass does. See From first call to paid: a flat glass job.

3. Bid & award

Lock the bid freezes the price you send. Then:

• Send the bid to the contractor by email or text. They get a link to the bid and can accept it themselves; the screen updates the moment they do.
• Record the award when they tell you the work is yours: who awarded it, and their Subcontract or PO number.

The award does three things at once. The contractor's bid becomes the contract. The bids to every other contractor on the project close as lost, and their jobs are cancelled. And the schedule of values is set up from the contract: the breakdown you'll bill against every month. See Pay applications and retainage.

Recording an award needs permission to edit estimates.

4. Submittals

Before you order, the architect reviews what you're going to build: shop drawings, glass product data, hardware cut sheets, samples, sometimes structural calculations. On the Submittals step, Add a submittal for each package the contract asks for:

• a Title ("Storefront shop drawings") and Kind;
• Which openings does it cover? (pick the marks);
• the files.

Submittals are numbered 001, 002 and so on. Send for review when it goes to the contractor, then record the answer when it comes back: Approved, Approved as noted, Revise and resubmit (which starts Rev 1, for the corrected files) or Rejected.

Made-to-order glass isn't ordered until every submittal is approved or approved as noted. Glass you cut from your own stock isn't held up. When the last one is approved, the job moves on to ordering by itself.

If the contract doesn't ask for submittals, press Nothing to submit: release for fabrication. Release for fabrication now moves the job on early, but made-to-order glass still waits for any submittal that's open.

5. Glass, shop, schedule and install

These work exactly as in Flat Glass: order made to size or cut from stock, the shop cut list, booking the crew, and the install checklist. Two differences:

• No texts. The customer is a contractor, not a homeowner, so Suprata doesn't text them about glass orders or installers on the way.
• Substantial completion. At the end of the install, the contractor's superintendent signs that the work is substantially complete, apart from the punch list.

6. Change orders

Work changes. A transom is added at the entry, a storefront is deleted. Each change is a change order, written on the Pay apps step:

1. Write a change order: What is it for? ("Add transom at the entry") and one or more lines with amounts. Work taken off is a negative amount, a credit.
2. Create change order, then Send it to the contractor by email or text. They can approve it on the link. Or press Approve and record who approved it at the contractor.
3. Once approved, it adds its own line to the schedule of values ("Change order 1: Add transom at the entry, $640.00"), and the contract grows by that amount. You bill it on the next application like any other line.

A change order waiting for approval can be Withdrawn. One that's approved can't; write a credit change order instead, so both stay on the record.

7. Punch list

At the walk-through, the contractor lists what they want fixed. On the Punch list step, add each item: What, Where (use the mark: "SF3, 2nd floor") and Who. It works on a phone, with a photo per item. Tick items off as they're done.

When the last item is ticked, or The walk-through found nothing, the job moves on to final billing and the retainage.

8. Pay applications

You don't wait for the punch list to bill. From the award onward, at the end of each month you fill in a pay application: how far along each line of the schedule of values is, plus materials stored on site. Submitting it creates the invoice, the application PDF and a lien waiver. The retainage held back is billed at the end. It's covered step by step, with a worked example, in Pay applications and retainage.

The Pay applications page under Commercial Glazing shows every awarded contract with what's billed, the retainage held, and who is Due for an application this month.

9. Closeout

The Closeout list on the Pay apps step is what most contractors want before they release your retainage:

• Punch list complete
• Warranty letter: Make the letter creates it as a PDF, with your warranty period and wording, dated from the install.
• Operation and maintenance information: upload the manuals and care instructions.
• As-built drawings: upload them.
• Retainage release: billed with its own invoice.
• Final lien waiver

The contract closes by itself once it's fully billed, the retainage is billed, every invoice is paid and the punch list is done. Until then, the Closed step lists exactly what's still outstanding.

Common mistakes

Doing the takeoff again for each contractor. Copying is the default for a reason. A second takeoff by hand is a second chance to miss an opening.

Recording the award on the wrong bid. The award closes every other bid on the project and cancels their jobs. Check the contractor's name at the top of the screen before you press it.

Ordering around the submittals. Releasing for fabrication early doesn't release made-to-order glass, and that's on purpose. If the architect changes the glass makeup on review, the glass you'd already ordered is yours to keep.

Doing extra work without a change order. The schedule of values only grows with approved change orders. Work you did on a verbal OK can't be billed until it's written up, and by then the superintendent who said yes has moved on.

Treating "Approved as noted" as "Approved". It counts as approved, so ordering can go ahead, but the notes are corrections you're expected to make. Read them before the order goes out.

Leaving closeout until the retainage is due. Contractors hold retainage until they have your O&M manuals, warranty letter and as-builts. Collect them as the job goes, not in the last week.

Related

• Pay applications and retainage
• From first call to paid: a flat glass job
• Setting up your glass price list
• The shop cut list and remnant rack
• Billing accounts: fleets and other payers