Formwork pricing has a reputation for being craft-driven and hard to standardize, and the reputation is deserved — form facing material, tie pattern, and reuse cycles all change the number in ways a simple concrete-volume takeoff never captures. Less talked about: forming scope also carries real placing risk. This is the trade that pours and vibrates the concrete it forms, which means it owns the formed-surface defects a strip reveals, whether or not that ownership is stated anywhere in the spec.
This is a working list of where forming and placing scope actually gets decided, built from what shows up across real Canadian ICI tenders — not a formwork product guide, a list of the specific boundary questions worth answering before the number leaves the office.
What's reliably yours
- Formwork supply, erection and stripping — forms for every element bid: footings, walls, columns, beams, slabs on deck, stairs, plus ties, accessories, release agents, chamfers, reveals and rustication. The accessories list is where a fast takeoff loses money — chamfer strips and rustication joints are labour on every linear foot they touch.
- Placing formed and structural concrete — pouring, consolidating and vibrating the concrete this trade forms: footings, foundation walls, grade beams, piers, columns and suspended slabs. This carries the real liability: defects revealed at strip belong to whoever vibrated.
- Formed-surface make-good — tie-hole treatment, fin removal, and sack or patch repair of formed surfaces to the specified finish class after stripping. The placing side of the finish classes covered below, and routine work, not a rare repair.
- Shoring, reshoring and falsework — design, supply, installation and removal, including engineered falsework drawings where required, plus the stripping-strength and reshore sequences that govern the whole cycle.
- Blockouts, boxouts, bulkheads and edge forms — openings, penetration blockouts, construction-joint bulkheads and slab edge forms. Counted work with real material and labour, not incidental extras.
- Setting of cast-in items, when assigned — anchor bolts, embed plates, sleeves and waterstops set into forms, when the documents assign the setting duty to the forming trade. Extract the assignment either way.
Where the fight actually happens
The placing/finishing boundary on suspended slabs
Tenders routinely lump "place and finish" into a single line for suspended slabs, as if it describes one scope for one trade. It doesn't. A finishing trade that refuses to vibrate concrete it didn't form is standard practice, not an unusual position — the forming trade pours and vibrates, and the finisher works the top surface once that's done. On slabs on grade and slabs on deck, by contrast, the finisher usually places its own concrete, so the boundary only becomes live on structural suspended slabs. Extract the boundary the documents actually draw for each slab type, and flag it explicitly whenever they draw none — a silent tender is the scenario where both trades end up assuming the other has it.
Architectural concrete formwork
Form liners, specified tie-hole patterns, board-form finishes and required sample panels sit in a completely different price class from standard structural forming — matching a specified reveal pattern or liner texture across an exposed wall has little in common with plywood-form structural work. Whether it's in your scope at all depends entirely on what the finish schedule calls for on this tender; it's conditional rather than standard, and it needs its own line once triggered rather than folding into the general formwork rate.
The other half: what isn't yours, even when it looks close
- Flatwork placing and all finishing — slabs on grade and slabs on deck are placed and finished by the finishing trade, and the top-surface finishing of the suspended slabs this trade pours is the finisher's too. What stays yours is the formed surface underneath — worth restating because it's exactly the line the "place and finish" ambiguity above blurs.
- Concrete supply — the ready-mix itself belongs to the supplier, not this trade. What does stay yours to extract: placing-driven mix requirements like pumpability, slump at the pump, or self-consolidating concrete for congested walls, since those exist because of how this trade places the mix, not what it's made of.
- Reinforcing steel — a separate trade's supply and placement entirely.
- Permanent works design — falsework and shoring engineering is this trade's responsibility; the structure's own design is never yours to carry.
- Waterproofing systems — membranes belong to the waterproofing trade. The nuance: form-tie type at waterproofed walls — specifically waterstop-compatible ties — is still this trade's cost, because the tie choice is a forming decision even though the membrane isn't.
Six things that hide outside the formwork drawings
- Formed-surface finish classes. SSD or architectural finish classes, form facing material requirements, tie-hole patterns, and form reuse limits on exposed work are usually stated once — and that one clause is the difference between pricing plywood and pricing liner panels.
- Stripping strength and reshore requirements. Minimum concrete strength before stripping, plus reshore levels and durations, are cycle-time facts that directly set how many sets of formwork this trade needs to own or rent.
- Tolerance class call-outs. ACI 117-style tolerances tighter than standard, and plumb requirements on tall walls and columns, are labour multipliers that read like general-note boilerplate but change productivity assumptions materially.
- Anchor bolt and embed setting ownership. Templates, setting and survey verification of cast-in items get assigned inconsistently between forming, rebar and steel — extract the assignment for this tender, and flag it when there isn't one.
- Pour sequence and construction joint restrictions. Maximum pour heights and lengths, mandated joint locations, and checkerboard sequences set form quantities and reuse cycles — schedule constraints wearing a structural-notes disguise.
- Crane and hoisting access. Whether gang forms or flying forms are viable depends on the site's hoisting notes — a single logistics paragraph can change the entire forming method, and with it the cost basis of the bid.
Who you're actually sharing the pour with
| Trade | What to reconcile before you price |
|---|---|
| Reinforcing trade | Access windows between forming one side, placing steel, and closing forms — plus who reopens forms when an inspection fails. |
| Concrete placer | Pour schedule drives form cycling; stripping-strength results gate reuse; blowout and alignment responsibility during the pour itself. |
| Steel trade | Anchor bolt templates and embed plates set in forms — the supply, setting and survey sign-off boundaries between the two trades. |
| Mechanical & electrical trades | Blockouts, sleeves and boxouts in forms come from M/E drawings — late information means re-forming, at real cost. |
| Waterproofing trade | Below-grade walls: waterstop tie types, tie-hole treatment, and form release compatibility with the membrane system. |
| Finishing trade | The suspended-slab handoff — this trade pours and vibrates, the finisher works the top surface. Timing, access and who accepts the pour need to be agreed, not assumed. |
The pass that catches most of this
Read the structural general notes specifically for stripping strength, tolerance class and pour sequencing before pricing form sets off the drawings alone — those three clauses set how much formwork you actually need to own to hit the schedule. Then check every suspended slab individually for a stated placing/finishing split, because a tender silent on one slab isn't necessarily silent on all of them. The concrete volume gets you a starting number; the boundary items above are what turn it into a number that survives the first pour.