An electrical bid rarely goes wrong on the panel schedule. Panels, feeders, branch wiring, devices — that's the part with a quantity and a unit rate, and every estimator prices it the same careful way. Where electrical bids actually lose money is at the edges: the systems that are electrical work everywhere except on this particular tender, and the boundary clauses that assign a duty to whichever trade reads them first — or to neither, if nobody does.
This is a working list of where those edges sit, built from what actually shows up across real Canadian ICI tenders — schools, transit facilities, hospitals, commercial fit-outs. Not a code reference. A list of the questions to answer before the number leaves the office.
What's reliably yours
Four things are electrical scope on essentially every tender, and they're worth naming only so the boundary items below stand out by contrast:
- Power distribution, complete — service, switchgear, panels, feeders, branch wiring and devices. The one-line diagram and the panel schedules are the actual price list; everything else in this article is what the one-line doesn't show.
- Lighting and controls — fixtures per the schedule, lighting controls, emergency and exit systems. Fixture count and control complexity (occupancy sensing, daylight harvesting, a lighting control panel with its own programming) drive the bid more than the fixture spec itself.
- Equipment connections — power to mechanical and owner-supplied equipment per the equipment schedules, each with its own voltage, breaker size and disconnect requirement.
- Grounding, raceways and supports — the complete raceway system, cable tray, grounding and bonding. It's the unglamorous majority of the labour hours and the easiest place to under-count.
Where the fight actually happens
The Division 23/26 boundary — starters, VFDs, disconnects
Every mechanical unit on the schedule needs a starter, a VFD, or a disconnect, furnished by one trade and wired by another — and specs assign the split inconsistently, sometimes unit by unit within the same schedule. The same ambiguity extends to duct detectors, damper actuators and fan interlock wiring: electrical in one spec, mechanical controls in the next. There is no default answer. There's only what this tender's schedule actually says, checked against every unit, not the first three.
Fire alarm: four duties, often three parties
Fire alarm is frequently a licensed specialty sub-scope sitting under the electrical umbrella rather than electrical work itself — and even when it is electrical, panel programming is routinely carved out as a separate duty from device installation and wiring. Add verification (the ULC/NFPA-style commissioning step that proves the system works) and you have four distinct obligations — device install, wiring, programming, verification — that a tender can assign to as few as two parties or as many as four. The gap that costs money: programming and verification excluded from every bid at once, because each bidder assumed someone else had it.
Low-voltage: sub-scope or direct contract
Communications, security and AV systems under Divisions 27 and 28 go to the electrical contractor as often as they go direct to the owner via a separate contract entirely. Both are common. The tender has to say which this one is — and if it doesn't say clearly, that silence is the finding to flag before pricing, not after.
Temporary power
Site temporary power and lighting is formally a Division 01 general-requirements duty, but it lands on the electrical trade by default often enough that "by others" needs to be confirmed rather than assumed. The real cost isn't the initial hookup — it's who pays for consumption across a schedule that might run a full winter, and who's on the hook for relocating temporary distribution as the site sequence moves.
The other half: what isn't yours, even when it looks close
- Control wiring furnished under mechanical — BMS and control wiring is frequently stated as Division 23 or 25 work, explicitly excluded from electrical. The value of finding this clause isn't the exclusion itself — it's confirming the tender actually states it, rather than assuming.
- Utility company work — utility-side service, transformers and their fees follow the utility's own rules, not the spec's. What you price is the demarcation point and any charges the tender assigns to the contractor on the customer side of it.
Five things that hide outside Division 26 entirely
These rarely show up where you'd look for them, which is exactly why they get missed:
- Voltage drop and aluminum restrictions. General notes sometimes prohibit aluminum conductors above a certain size, or mandate spare capacity in feeder sizing. Both change conductor tonnage, and both are easy to miss because they read like boilerplate.
- Arc flash and commissioning studies. An engineering study or Cx (commissioning) participation requirement can sit in a single line of a general note and represent real engineering hours the fixture count never suggested.
- Owner and vendor equipment connections. Kitchen equipment, medical equipment, IT racks and process equipment all need power, and their connection counts live in equipment schedules that sit outside Division 26 — a separate document you have to go find.
- Fire alarm programming and verification — worth repeating, because it's the single most commonly double-excluded item on this list.
- The Division 23/26 boundary, everywhere it repeats — also worth repeating, because it doesn't happen once. It happens once per mechanical unit on the schedule.
Who you're actually sharing the wall with
Every boundary above has a name on the other side of it, and the coordination that avoids a dispute happens at bid time, not at rough-in:
| Trade | What to reconcile before you price |
|---|---|
| Mechanical | Every scheduled unit's electrical characteristics against the electrical drawings — flag mismatches now; wire to whichever document actually governs. |
| Fire alarm specialty | Device install vs. wiring vs. programming vs. verification — confirm which of the four is actually yours. |
| General contractor | Temporary power's extent, who pays energy costs, and the timing of switchover to permanent power. |
| Utility | Demarcation point, metering, fees, and any schedule dependency on utility-side work outside your control. |
| Drywall | In-wall rough-in and device box placement need to be confirmed and inspected before walls close — a sequencing conversation, not just a scope one. |
The pass that catches most of this
None of this requires reading the spec like a novel. It requires reading the mechanical equipment schedule with the same attention as the panel schedule, checking every starter/VFD/disconnect assignment individually rather than assuming the first one sets the pattern, and treating "fire alarm" as four separate line items until the tender proves otherwise. The boundary items are what turn a complete-looking Division 26 read into an actually complete bid — and they're also exactly the kind of requirement that gets buried on page 40 of a document nobody has time to read twice.