Our FR5 carton quote looked affordable until I listed the presentation fixtures, safeguarding, installation and training outside its total; how do I compare it with the fuller offer while some of our own work still has no price?
Give both offers the same complete task and responsibility list, including your own labour, with each missing price marked unknown rather than zero; the cheaper arm line cannot decide the comparison while its customer scope is blank
The cheaper offer leaves fixture design and making to us, while the fuller one includes design but not manufacture; our toolroom has no capacity estimate for either version yet.
Ask who supplies the accepted manufacturing drawings and who owns the complete fixture check in each option, then have the toolroom price the actual work and capacity against that split
Toolroom priced both splits and the required outside work; purchasing chose the fuller supplier for a defined paid design stage, with manufacture, installation and acceptance costs separately estimated, so we have a next step without pretending the whole cell price is fixed.
Keep the stage deliverables beside its price, including what your toolroom receives and who accepts it, so finishing that paid design does not simply produce another customer-scope blank