Every paving quote is the same handful of variables arranged differently. Once you can name them, a quote stops being a number to accept or reject and becomes a document you can question.
Access comes first because it decides what machinery can reach the work. A surface a paver can run on lays faster than one reached through a gate, and hand work is slower everywhere it is needed.
Ground conditions come second and they are the ones that produce surprises. Soft subgrade, buried material or water moving under the surface all add work, and none of it is visible until something is opened up.
Then there is what has to come out. A thick old build generates more material to remove and dispose of than a thin one. Base work and removal are where these three land on a quote, and how the site drains decides whether any of it lasts.
Site given
The decisions
The Edmonton choices that are genuinely yours
Scope, which is the biggest one
How much area, and whether widening, drainage correction or markings are in or out. More scope costs more; nothing else about this is complicated.
Build depth, within limits
Depth can be specified up for heavy use. It can be specified down to save money, but under real traffic that returns as settlement rather than staying saved.
Timing and staging
How much has to stay open, and whether work runs at night. Both are real costs and both are decided by the site rather than the contractor.
How much you do at once
Mobilisation is a fixed cost per visit, so combining nearby work into one visit is cheaper than returning, while deferring sound areas lowers this year.
Comparing properly
Making two Edmonton quotes comparable
Most quote comparisons fail on area before they get to anything else. One figure measured on site and another taken off a satellite image are not describing the same job, and the gap between them explains more than it looks like it should.
Depth is the second thing to line up. Two quotes with the same area and different builds are two different products, and the cheaper one is only cheaper until the heavy traffic arrives.
After that, look for what is absent. Removal, disposal, drainage and markings are the usual omissions, and a quote missing them looks competitive right up to the moment they get added. On a drive and on a lot the omissions differ, and what else to ask is worth reading before you sign anything.
Scope, by a wide margin. How much area and how much work is included moves a quote further than any decision about product, depth or timing taken on its own.
Because access and ground conditions are the two variables that produce surprises, and neither is visible remotely. A phone figure is a guess dressed as a quote.
On the invoice only. Under real traffic a thin build settles and cracks early, so the saving comes back as repairs well before the surface should have needed them.
Usually, yes. Mobilisation is a fixed cost per visit, so combining nearby work into a single visit costs less than having a crew set up and return again for each piece separately.
Removal and disposal, drainage correction and line markings. A quote missing those items looks competitive right up to the point they are added back, which is usually when the comparison changes completely.
It can be, once you have confirmed the area matches, the build is the same and nothing is missing from it. The point of all this is to make the quotes comparable before you choose between them.
Get your Edmonton quote broken into lines you can question
We will measure on site and quote with the area, the build, the removal and the markings separated, so you can compare it against anything else you have.
