RealTorch › The 15 Functions › Purchasing
Function 06 of 15Purchasing
Purchasing buys out the job and controls what it costs. Most of that is won before anyone negotiates.
Purchasing is responsible for buying materials, services and trade labour, and for the system that tracks what those cost. It sits between estimating (what we said it would cost) and construction (what it actually takes), and it is the function that decides whether the numbers on either side are comparable.
The knowledge base is blunt about where the leverage really comes from: being a preferred customer. Four components earn it — reliable volume, clean and organised jobs, paying on the terms you agreed, and not whining. Builders who have those get first crew, better pricing and honest warnings. Builders who don't get the crew that was available. Written scopes of work are what make bids comparable; without them you are not levelling bids, you are guessing.
Scope before price
Two bids for different work are not two bids. Level the scope, then read the number.
Preferred customer
Volume, clean jobs, terms honoured, no whining. It is worth more than the last 2% of negotiation.
Cheap has a price
The low bid that excludes hardware and beams is a change order you haven't received yet.
Buy from history
Your own job costs across recent homes beat a cost book that has never seen your plans.
Atlas in action
Three framing bids on the same plan, none of them quoting the same work.
Ridgeline isn't $9,600 low. It's $4,100 high.
Levelled against your own scope of work, Ridgeline excludes engineered beams, hardware and the garage-door header package — $13,700 of work the other two carry. Added back, Ridgeline is $147,200, above Halloran at $143,100. Two other things worth knowing before you decide: Ridgeline's bid is the only one without a labour-escalation clause, and Halloran has framed 23 of your homes with an average of 1.4 punch items against 4.1 for the field.
| Ridgeline | Halloran | Cormack | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bid as submitted | $133,500 | $143,100 | $144,800 |
| Engineered beams | excluded | included | included |
| Hardware package | excluded | included | included |
| Garage header pkg | excluded | included | included |
| Scope add-back | +$13,700 | — | — |
| Levelled total | $147,200 | $143,100 | $144,800 |
| Escalation clause | none | capped 4% | capped 6% |
| Homes framed for you | 0 | 23 | 6 |
Composite example. Atlas reads the bid PDFs against your written scope, so the comparison is like-for-like before anyone argues about price.
The cheapest bid and the lowest cost are rarely the same bid
Atlas levels bids against your scope, checks each trade against your own job history, and tells you what the difference actually buys.
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