When a framing sub hands you a number, you're looking at four or five buckets stacked together: labor, material (if it's turnkey), equipment, supervision and overhead, and margin. Here's the part GCs sometimes miss — the spread between two bids on the same set of plans almost never comes from margin. It comes from scope. The exclusions page is the real bid.
What's inside the number
Labor
We take the plans off — every wall length, every square foot of floor and roof — and convert it to crew-hours using production rates we've tracked across 1,000-plus units. Walls, floors, and roofs each carry their own rate, and complexity moves those rates hard. A rectangular three-story with stacked walls frames far faster per square foot than an articulated building with bays, bump-outs, and a dozen roof planes. That's why two buildings with identical square footage can honestly be 20 percent apart in framing labor.
Material
On a turnkey bid, the lumber package is usually the biggest single line: the takeoff plus a waste factor, typically 5 to 10 percent depending on the design. Lumber pricing moves, so pay attention to how the bid handles it — locked pricing with an acceptance window, an indexed allowance, or a supplier-held quote. A bid with no stated lumber terms is a bid you'll be renegotiating later. If you're weighing labor-only against a full package, we broke that down in what turnkey framing actually includes.
Equipment
A forklift on site for the duration, crane days for trusses and tall walls, sometimes a second lift on a spread-out site. Crane time is the line to read closely: who eats the second mobilization if trusses aren't on site the day the crane shows up?
Supervision, overhead, and margin
A working foreman, layout, safety, daily cleanup — plus the overhead nobody sees: general liability, workers' comp (framing carries some of the highest comp rates in construction), trucks, small tools, and warranty work. Margin sits on top and it's real, but it's modest. Framing is a volume trade; nobody is retiring on one bid.
The exclusions page is the bid
Two framing numbers $80,000 apart on the same plans almost never mean one sub got greedy. It means one of them left something out. Before you compare bottom lines, line both bids up against the same checklist:
- Hardware and hangers — supplied by whom, installed by whom?
- Miscellaneous steel, columns, and embeds
- Backing and blocking for cabinets, grab bars, and other trades
- Stairs, decks, and exterior landings
- Housewrap, window and exterior door installation
- Crane and forklift — whose line item?
- Winter conditions — snow removal off decks, temporary enclosure. Any job framing past November in our market should say who owns these.
If you want ranges for what framing actually runs per square foot in the Upper Midwest, our commercial framing cost guide covers it.
Red flags worth catching now
Fall is buyout season — most of what's being bid this week starts over the winter or in the spring rush. Watch for:
- A number well below the pack with a thin or missing exclusions list. "Everything's included" is never true.
- Unit prices with no quantities behind them — you can't check a takeoff that doesn't exist.
- No crew commitment or duration. A great price from a sub who can't hold your start date is not a great price.
- No lumber terms on a turnkey number.
Our fix is simple: every bid we send goes out with a plain-language scope letter, so there's no archaeology six months later about who owns the stair blocking. More on how we set that up with GCs on our GC page.
Buying out framing for a winter or spring start? Send us the plans and we'll return a number with the scope spelled out.