Answer a GAEB inquiry as a subcontractor

Log the inquiry the general contractor sent you: which trade package it covers, the Abgabefrist and the Bindefrist you are held to, and whether the letter admits Nebenangebote at all.

Why: Whether an alternate is allowed is decided by the inquiry, not by you. Reading that together with the deadline on day one is what stops a good idea being set aside on a formality, or a finished price arriving an hour late.

Drop the X83 on the import tab, check the parsed positions in the preview and take them into a fresh LV in your own project. Ordinal numbers, quantities, units and Langtext arrive exactly as the contractor issued them.

Why: Retyping the contractor's LV is where a transposed quantity or a dropped position becomes a loss you carry to site. Importing keeps your price tied to their numbering, so every line answers the line they asked about.

Work through the imported LV and keep the titles and positions that belong to your trade, whether that is Trockenbau or TGA, and mark what is outside your scope. Check the quantities against your own take before you price a line.

Why: A Nachunternehmer prices one trade out of a bill written for the whole building. Drawing that boundary first keeps your offer comparable, and checking the quantity is what stops you carrying the planner's undermeasure at your own risk.

Price every position from your own rates and assemblies instead of somebody else's guide price: labour, material, plant and the surcharge you actually carry, each line read against its Langtext as you go.

Why: Your own rate is the only number you can defend when the contractor asks how you got there. Reading the Langtext while you price is where you find the scaffold, the working hours or the tolerance that would otherwise be free work.

Keep the priced LV as your Hauptangebot, line for line as asked. Where your method really is better, copy the bill into a second LV, change only the positions your solution touches and write the reason next to each one.

Why: A Nebenangebot wins work when it is a clean second offer the contractor can compare position by position. Mixing the better idea into the main bill instead risks the whole offer being set aside as not answering the tender.

Run both LVs through validation: no position left at zero, no quantity that no longer ties back to the X83, and the structure the return file has to honour still intact.

Why: A single unpriced position can void the whole submission, and nobody reads several hundred lines twice at four in the afternoon on the deadline day. Validation is the second pair of eyes that takes a minute.

Export each priced LV on the export tab as its own X84, name the files so the contractor sees at a glance which one is the Hauptangebot and which the Nebenangebot, and send them with your covering letter before the Abgabefrist.

Why: An X84 reads straight into the contractor's bid comparison, so your prices land in the evaluation without anybody rekeying them. Two clearly named files are what let your alternate be judged rather than put aside.