How to Compare Turnkey Poultry Proposals

Step 1: verify the offer is actually turnkey

Before comparing prices, confirm each proposal covers the complete scope below. An offer missing several of these items is a supply contract with a turnkey title, and it must be compared against the other bids only after the missing items are priced in.

• Design and engineering: layout, structural drawings, ventilation and cooling calculation, electrical single-line diagram
• Civil works and structure: levelling, foundations, floor slab, steel or panel structure, insulation, doors and anterooms
• All equipment packages: feeding, drinking, ventilation, cooling, heating, lighting, climate control, alarms, plus segment packages such as nests and egg handling
• Electrical distribution to each device, and the standby power interface — at minimum the ATS and generator sizing basis
• Installation with named responsibility: supplier crew, or local crew under supplier supervision with stated supervision days
• Commissioning against written performance criteria: air speed at bird level, temperature uniformity, static pressure, alarm function
• Training, as-built documentation, manuals and a priced first-year spare parts list
• Warranty terms with a defined start event, and a written exclusions list

Step 2: list inclusions and exclusions line by line

Build one sheet with a row per scope item and a column per bidder. Mark each cell included, excluded, or priced as an option. The exclusions that most often survive inside a turnkey label:

• Land, earthworks beyond a defined cut/fill allowance, and access roads
• Permits, licences, environmental studies and local inspection fees
• Utility connections to the site boundary: grid connection fee, transformer, water source and borehole
• Import duty, VAT treatment, customs clearance and port charges
• Offloading, cranes and on-site storage after delivery
• Generator itself where only the 'interface' is included, and fuel storage
• Supervision standby days caused by site delays, and the day rate beyond the included allowance
• Working capital items: first-flock feed, litter, chicks and consumables — never inside equipment scope, but they belong in the project budget next to it

Step 3: surface the risk items before award

Risk items are not prices, but they decide what the price is worth. Ask every bidder the same questions in writing and put the answers in the evaluation sheet next to the money.

• Performance guarantee: is there a guaranteed air speed, temperature or capacity figure, and what is the remedy if commissioning misses it?
• Liquidated damages for delay: rate per week, cap, and the events that suspend them
• Payment milestones and retention: how much is held back until acceptance, and what triggers its release
• Currency and validity: offer currency, validity period, and the escalation clause if the schedule slips
• Change-order mechanism: how variations are priced, and whether day rates are stated in advance
• Subcontracted scope: which parts are subcontracted locally — usually civil works — and who warrants their quality
• Warranty start event: shipment, delivery or commissioning — a warranty that starts at shipment can be half spent before the birds arrive
• Interface matrix: anything supplied by others, stated per line, so no scope sits between contracts

CAPEX normalisation rules

Apply these rules in order. Each one removes one source of artificial difference between the totals.

• One capacity basis: restate every offer per placed bird and per house, at the same stocking density and target weight
• One delivery point: restate all prices to the same Incoterm and site gate, adding freight, duty, clearance and inland transport where excluded
• One currency and date: convert at one stated rate on one stated date, and record the rate on the sheet
• Add back exclusions at one common local estimate per item — the same figure for every bidder, so your assumption cannot favour anyone
• Include supervision, erection labour, commissioning, training and first-year spares in every total, priced where excluded
• Separate priced options from base scope: compare base-to-base first, then options as a second pass
• Flag scope differences that money cannot fix: fewer fans for the same design temperature, thinner insulation, simpler controller class

Operating cost normalisation rules

Turnkey bidders increasingly quote energy and operating figures. Compare them only on a common basis, and treat any figure without a stated basis as unknown.

• Same climate file: energy claims must assume your design summer and winter conditions, not a temperate reference site
• Same energy price and escalation: one electricity price, one fuel price, one annual escalation rate for all bidders
• Same production basis: cycles per year, downtime, target weight and stocking density fixed across bids
• Include the quiet items: controller or remote-monitoring subscriptions, planned maintenance visits, pad and belt replacement intervals
• Ventilation and heating quality shows up in FCR and mortality, not in the equipment price — note design differences even where you cannot price them
• Use a common horizon and, if you discount, one discount rate for all bidders over the same number of years

What a low turnkey price usually means

After normalisation, the remaining price differences are real, and they come from a short list of causes: a genuinely leaner scope, a lower specification level, thinner risk allocation with more exclusions, a cheaper subcontracted civil package, or a supplier buying market entry. None of these is automatically wrong — but you should know which one you are buying before award, not during commissioning.

The evaluation sheet, not the headline total, is the decision document. When two normalised totals are close, the differentiators are the risk items from step 3: performance guarantee, retention, warranty start and local service coverage.

Turnkey comparison sheet: what to check per bidder and the rule that makes it comparable

Score the sheet, not the brochure. Where two bidders tie after normalisation, the risk items — guarantee, retention, warranty start, local service — decide.