Andrew Dutil says the habit of awarding contracts to the lowest bidder ignores the cost that shows up later, in change orders and claims.

WEST PALM BEACH, FL / ACCESS Newswire / October 16, 2026 / Andrew Dutil has spent his career in project controls, contract administration, and claims consulting, much of it on public construction work. He says one belief keeps resurfacing on almost every project he reviews: that the lowest bid is the best value.

“A low bid is a number on a single day,” Dutil says. “It tells you almost nothing about what the project will actually cost by the time it closes out.”

He points to the gap between the price a contractor submits and the price an owner ends up paying. That gap is filled with change orders, delay claims, and disputes over scope. None of those costs show up in the bid tabulation. All of them show up in the final invoice.

Where the Savings Disappear

Dutil says the pattern is predictable once you have seen it enough times. A contractor bids aggressively to win the work, then recovers margin through claims once the job is underway.

“The lowest number up front can turn into the highest number at closeout,” he says. “I have watched it happen on jobs where the original award looked like a clear win for the owner.”

He says this is not always a sign of bad faith. Sometimes a bid is simply built on thin assumptions about site conditions, schedule, or materials. When those assumptions prove wrong, someone has to pay for the difference. Dutil says the contract terms, not the bid price, decide who that is.

“A contract that is not written to anticipate change puts the owner in a weaker position the moment something goes wrong,” he says. “And something always goes wrong. The question is who absorbs it.”

What Dutil Looks for Instead

Dutil says value on a construction contract is closer to a track record than a single price. He looks at how a contractor has handled schedule pressure on past work, how they document conditions in the field, and how they have approached change orders when disputes come up.

“A contractor who documents carefully and negotiates change orders in good faith is worth more than a slightly lower number,” he says. “That difference rarely shows up until month six or seven of the project.”

He also points to the strength of the contract itself. Dutil says clear definitions of scope, a workable process for pricing changes, and a schedule that reflects real sequencing all reduce the number of disputes that turn into claims later.

“None of that is exciting work,” he says. “It is also the work that keeps a project from going sideways.”

A Habit Worth Breaking

Dutil says the lowest-bid habit persists partly because it is easy to defend. A low number is simple to explain to a board or a budget committee. A judgment call about contractor history or contract structure is harder to justify in the moment, even when it saves money later.

“Owners are not wrong to care about price,” he says. “They are wrong if price is the only thing they look at.”

He says the fix is not complicated, just less convenient. It means reviewing a contractor’s claims history before award, not after a dispute starts. It means writing contract terms that spell out how changes get priced, instead of leaving that to negotiation once tempers are already up. And it means tracking cost against the final number, not just the bid number, when deciding whether a project succeeded.

“The bid is the opening number,” Dutil says. “The closeout number is the real one. Owners who only track the first one are only getting half the story.”

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About Andrew Dutil

Andrew Dutil is an independent contractor based in West Palm Beach, Florida, working in project management, project controls, contract administration, and claims consulting. He is a combat veteran of OIF II with the US Army and holds a Bachelor’s degree in Architectural Studies and a Master of Architecture, both from Norwich University, where he graduated with honors. His background includes work as a civil engineer with the US Army Corps of Engineers.

Contact:

Info@andrew-dutil.com

SOURCE: Andrew Dutil