Div 06 40 00 bid packages The argument is always about the boundary.

The identified scope

Established against the specification and the drawings together.

Measured quantities

For that scope, with the basis stated.

Explicit boundaries

What is included, what sits in an adjacent section, and what is genuinely ambiguous. Three categories, not two.

Cost-carrying specification requirements

Grade, materials, matching, finish, testing, mock-ups and any quality programme obligations.

Addenda

And their effect on scope and quantity.

Allowances and provisional items

Identified separately rather than absorbed into rates.

Stated assumptions

Wherever the documents do not resolve.

These are the six places a millwork scope argument usually starts. Every one of them is reported explicitly rather than decided quietly.

• Casework versus equipment. Laboratory and healthcare projects routinely place casework partly in the equipment sections. The same cabinet can appear in two divisions or in neither.
• Countertops and surfaces. Solid surface, stone and specialty tops move between sections depending on who wrote the specification.
• Hardware. Some hardware is specified in the finish hardware section rather than with the woodwork, and it is easy to price twice or not at all.
• Finishing. Whether shop finishing sits in Div 06 or in the finishes division changes the number materially.
• Installation. Sometimes carried by the woodwork scope, sometimes by the general contractor, and rarely stated as plainly as either party assumes.
• Blocking and substrate. Frequently disputed, and frequently unpriced by everyone in the chain.

Where the documents do not resolve a boundary, that is a bid qualification, not a silent assumption. It reaches you as something to decide.

A quantity taken purely from drawings will miss the grade requirement, the matching obligation, the mock-up and testing requirements, and any quality programme conditions. All of those are cost, and none of them is visible on an elevation.

This is why a Div 06 40 00 package is produced with specification analysis rather than as a pure measurement exercise. The two documents disagree often enough that reading either alone is guesswork.

Worth separating, because misclassifying the two leads to the wrong standard, the wrong detail depth and, eventually, a rejected submittal.

06 40 00 architectural woodwork is fully custom work, designed and fabricated for one project.

06 41 00 custom cabinets covers cabinet units that are configured rather than designed from raw material.

Which one governs decides the standard applied, the drawing depth expected and the grade obligations that follow. The classification is confirmed against the specification before anything is counted.

Millwork shops bidding institutional, healthcare, education and commercial work. General contractors levelling millwork bids who need an independent basis rather than three numbers built on three different assumptions. Estimating teams covering more opportunities than their hours allow.

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