Scopes, estimates, and change orders for right-of-way contracts

Three document types, one production standard: your client's template, the rate-sheet revision in force, a documented basis for every requirement and every price, and my signature before anything ships. Scopes and estimates are $250 each and change orders $150, flat; the free pilot covers set-up and your first live document. Proposal support is a separate service on a longer clock, described at the end.

The documents

What each one needs, what comes back, and where it stops

Every document type below ships carrying these five marks.

Scopes of work

$250 per document

The core product, whether your client's MSA calls it an ISOW, a task order, or a work authorization. An engineer's email and parcel details go in; a priced, formatted scope on your client's own template comes back, each task with its basis stated. When a scope needs defending, it ships with a short technical rationale laying out the reasoning and the open questions. This is the document the sample scope of work shows end to end, and a blank scope of work template is free to download.

You send: The engineer's email as sent, with the KMZ, plan sheets, or photos that came with it.
You get: The scope in Word and PDF on the client template, the pricing basis, written assumptions, and the verification checklist.
Boundaries: Land, permitting, and access work as requested. Construction, engineering design, and legal opinions are outside it. A scope and its estimate in one client file count as one document.
Timing: Next business day once the inputs are complete and your desk is set up. A target, not a guarantee.

Cost estimates

$250 per document

Priced from your current rate sheet with a not-to-exceed structure your client's engineering group can approve without a call back. Where a count is uncertain at intake, permits, landowners, easements, the question goes out first; if it stays open, the estimate states its basis and carries the contingency in writing. When the rate sheet changes, the lookup changes with it. At the reference client that has happened more than once, and the next document shipped on the new numbers.

You send: The request, the parcel or route material, and the rate-sheet revision that applies.
You get: An itemized estimate: item code, unit, quantity, unit price, extended amount, and the NTE, with assumptions and exclusions listed.
Boundaries: Multiple alternatives in one estimate are priced as one document when they share a basis; separately scoped packages are separate documents, and I say which before pricing.
Timing: Next-business-day target once inputs are complete and your desk is set up.

Change orders

$150 per document

Your agent calls it in, texts photos, or leaves a voice note about the cattle gate and the extra parcel visits. That narrative, in writing, images, or audio, becomes a change order priced against the rate sheet and justified in the language the utility's paperwork requires. Each one is numbered against a ledger of every prior change on that purchase order, so the amended not-to-exceed reconciles to what your client approved.

You send: The field account in any form, the purchase order or prior change it amends, and the rate sheet in force.
You get: The change order on the client form with original and amended totals side by side, the justification, and the funding history.
Boundaries: A change order amends an existing scope or purchase order. New work with no parent is priced as a scope.
Timing: Next-business-day target once inputs are complete and your desk is set up.

See a worked change order, with its funding history →

Included with every document

Source review

The email, attachments, plan sheets, KMZ files, photos, and the corridor's satellite imagery are read before anything is drafted. When the written request and the site material disagree, that comes back to you first.

Deterministic pricing

Software looks up the exact row on the rate-sheet revision in force and does the arithmetic. The model proposes which items apply; it is not allowed to produce an amount.

Written assumptions

Every gap in the intake is either closed by a cited reply or stated as an assumption you can accept or strike.

The verification checklist

Each line carries its basis and the kind of evidence behind it: source fact, rate basis, inference, approved assumption, or open item.

Human sign-off

I read every line against the source and sign before release.

Agreed formats

Word on your client's template plus PDF, named the way your client's file system expects. Other formats by arrangement.

Ongoing support

What the retainer carries, and what is available per document

Set-up on your document history

Your firm's desk is configured from your client's template, the current rate sheet, and twenty or more past scopes, estimates, or change orders, so output matches how your shop already writes and prices. Your material configures your desk and nothing else. Underneath sits a general right-of-way reference corpus of 26,817 documents; nothing any client sends enters it. About a week; $750, waived on every pilot.

Template and rate-sheet custody

Shops running transmission, pipeline, title, and renewables work for different clients carry a different template and rate structure for each. Every client's current revision is held separately, so the right format and the right numbers show up regardless of which client the email came from. Included on the retainer; per-document customers tell me when a client revises a template or rate sheet.

Tracking to approval

Submission is verified, not assumed. The rule comes from a real three weeks: a change order sat marked ready to submit while everyone assumed someone else had sent it, and a duplicate nearly got written. Every document's status is tracked from draft through your client's approval and purchase order, and anything left waiting gets surfaced. Included on the retainer.

Project types this desk has priced in live production:

Valve replacements · ILI runs · pipe exposures · corrosion control installs · reg station rebuilds · meter stations · AC mitigation · power drops · road & ditch crossings · security fence permitting · easements & acquisition

How a price gets made

Four steps. The model never does the math.

Interpret

The model reads the intake: the engineer's email, the KMZ, the plan sheets, the photos. It extracts parcels, tasks, and quantities, names which rate-sheet items apply, and writes down every assumption it made. Where the intake supports two readings, it drafts a question for you, not a choice.

Price

Software, not the model, does the math. It looks up the exact row on the rate-sheet revision in force on the intake date, checks that the unit matches the quantity, applies caps, minimums, and mileage, and foots the total independently. A rate or count that cannot be resolved stops the pricing and comes back to you as a question.

Check

Before I see it, automated checks confirm the work-order number matches on every page, totals reconcile, every amount points to a live rate row, and no template field is left blank. A second review, run separately from the drafting pass, rereads the source package against the rendered pages and flags anything unsupported.

Sign

I read the draft line by line against the engineer's email with the checklist beside it. My signature is the last gate. The finished document records the rate-sheet and template revision it was built on, so any number can be reproduced a year later.

See the checklist on a complete sample →

Send it the way your engineers already send it

Email

The engineer's prose, exactly as written. No forms, no portals, nothing to install.

KMZ files

Parcel and route geometry read directly, locations reconciled against the request.

Plan sets

Drawings and sheets attached to the project, referenced where the scope requires them.

Photos

Site conditions from the field, folded into scope language and change-order justification.

Voice memos

An agent talking through what happened is enough to build the narrative from.

Satellite imagery

Pulled and reviewed for the corridor itself: road class, access, adjacent parcels, constraints.

A stack of project papers, plans, maps, and photos condensed into one audited project summary card — Intake to structured data: the step every document type shares.

One pipeline underneath every document type. The intake step extracts the same structured project data, parcels, tasks, engineer, rates, and deadline, whether what comes back is a scope, an estimate, or a change order. That is why formatting does not drift and pricing does not lag a rate-sheet revision.

How the engagement runs →

Proposal support, quoted separately

A different service on a longer clock

When the next utility or DOT solicitation lands, the same discipline that prices a scope can break down the RFP, build the compliance matrix, and draft the narrative. I have written winning proposals for twenty years; this is the part of the desk that predates the automation.

It starts with a free bid/no-bid read, in writing, within one business day of receiving the solicitation, so you know whether to spend anything at all. The response itself is quoted per solicitation, typically $2,500 to $12,000 depending on size and complexity, on a schedule set by the solicitation's due date. It is not covered by the free pilot, the next-business-day target, or the retainer.

Send a solicitation for the free bid/no-bid read →

You send: The solicitation. For the compliance half, nothing else is needed. For the narrative half, a short packet only you have: capability statements, two or three past wins, key resumes, current certifications, and your org chart.
You get: The bid/no-bid read first. If you pursue: a compliance matrix, outline, schedule, and the drafted response, reviewed against the evaluation criteria.
Timing: Set by the solicitation, agreed in writing before work starts.

How the bid/no-bid read and RFP responses work →

Whichever one is due this month, start the set-up now.

$250 per scope or estimate, $150 per change order, flat. The pilot sets up your desk first, then the first document is free, so you judge it on your own paperwork.

Start the free pilot

Full pricing · Read the sample