On federally funded highway work, FHWA guidance calls for the engineer's estimate to be accurate enough that it lands within plus or minus 10% of the low bid on at least half of awarded projects, and treats bids that stray far from the estimate — in either direction — as a trigger for closer review, partly as a guard against collusion or bid-rigging. Competition is generally considered strong when six or more bids fall within 20% of the low bid; thin competition or a wide spread from the estimate can be grounds for an agency to reject all bids and re-solicit. Many agencies keep the engineer's estimate confidential until after bid opening specifically so bidders price against their own costs rather than anchoring to the agency's number. Historical bid tabs — what agencies actually awarded relative to their engineer's estimate on comparable scopes — are one of the more useful inputs for calibrating a new number rather than pricing in a vacuum. Reading those patterns out of public bid records at scale is exactly the kind of market intelligence Nonlinear is built to surface for a contractor building a bid.
Knowledge Base
What is an engineer's estimate?
An engineer's estimate is the owner's or designer's own projected cost for a public works project, prepared before bidding and used as the baseline for judging whether the bids that come in are reasonable.
