How to Check Your Scope Against By Others and NIC Notes

Why this matters

Most scope fights on a commercial job are not about the work anyone drew. They are about a line where one party's work stops and another's starts: who sets the rooftop unit on the curb, who wires the control panel, who connects the owner's dishwasher. The set marks those lines with a handful of short phrases, and each one is easy to read past at bid time. A shop that signs without listing them finds the missing piece on the day it is needed, when the only party left holding it is whoever is standing closest.

The phrases and what each one hands off

By others. The item is shown on the drawings but somebody other than you provides it. The phrase does not say who. "Others" might be another prime contractor, another subcontractor under the same general contractor, or the owner. Until somebody names the party, "by others" is a hole, not an assignment.

NIC (not in contract). The item is shown for information and is not part of the construction contract at all. It is usually owner work: furniture, owner-installed equipment, a future phase. NIC is clearer than "by others" because it removes the item from every contractor, yours included.

OFCI (owner furnished, contractor installed). The owner buys it and delivers it; you install it. The handoff lives in the details nobody wrote: who receives the delivery, who checks it for damage, who stores it, who furnishes the mounting hardware and the fittings, and who owns it if it does not work after you install it.

OFOI (owner furnished, owner installed) and CFCI (contractor furnished, contractor installed) complete the set. CFCI is the default for anything not otherwise marked; OFOI is NIC by another name.

Furnished by one division, installed by another. In the spec book, a split such as "motor starters furnished under Division 23, installed and wired under Division 26" divides one item between two trades. The furnishing trade buys and submits; the installing trade mounts and connects. Each side assumes the other is checking voltage, enclosure and mounting. See related: The MasterFormat Divisions a Service Trade Lives In, which owns how the divisions are organized.

See related: Reading Bid Documents + Scope Reference, which owns reading a bid package as a whole. This card is the one sweep through it that finds the handoffs.

The steps

1. Collect every document that can carry a scope line before you read any of them. That is the full drawing set for every discipline (not only yours), the project manual including Division 01, every addendum, the equipment schedules, and the bid form or scope letter from the general contractor. Handoffs to your trade are usually written on the other trade's sheets: the "electrical by Division 26" note often lives on the mechanical schedule, and the "roofing curb by Division 07" note lives on the roof plan. Read only your own discipline and you miss half the lines that touch you.

2. Search each document for the handoff phrases as text, not by eye. If the set is a PDF, search for "by others", "NIC", "N.I.C.", "OFCI", "owner furnished", "furnished by", "installed by", "under Division", "by owner", "existing to remain" and "future". On paper, take one highlighter color and go sheet by sheet through the general notes, keynotes and schedule remarks columns. Text search finds phrases hidden in schedule footnotes, which is where equipment splits live. Reading by eye catches what the search does not: a note that says "connection by EC" with no keyword.

3. Write every hit that touches your work into one handoff list, one line per item. For each line: the item, where you found it (sheet or spec section and paragraph), the phrase used, the party it names (or "not named"), and what your own scope has to do before or after it. Skip a hit only if your work never touches the item at all.

4. Mark every "not named" party and every split with no stated boundary. These are the items that cause the fights. "Disconnect by others" with no party named, "OFCI dishwasher" with no word about who supplies the supply stop and the drain connection, "starter furnished under Division 23" with no word on who confirms the voltage. Each one becomes a written question in step 6.

5. Check each line against the general contractor's scope letter or bid form. The general contractor often writes a scope breakdown that assigns the "by others" items to named subcontractors. Where the scope letter assigns an item to your trade, it is yours whatever the drawing phrase said. Where it assigns it to another trade, note that trade by name. Where the scope letter is silent, the item is still open.

6. Send the open lines as one written clarification before you sign, and keep the answer with the contract. One letter or email listing every open handoff, each with a proposed answer ("We assume the OFCI dishwasher is delivered, uncrated and set in place by the owner, and that our scope is the hot water supply from the stop and the indirect waste to the floor sink. Please confirm"). A proposed answer gets a yes or a correction in one pass; an open question gets an open answer. Ask for the response in writing and attach it to your subcontract or exclusions. This is not legal advice on how a court would read your contract; the written answer is a dated record of what everyone agreed, which is the operational fact you can bank. For anything with real money on it, your own attorney reads the subcontract.

7. Turn every confirmed handoff into an exclusion or inclusion line in your proposal. "Excludes: setting of rooftop units on curbs (by general contractor's crane subcontractor per scope letter dated...). Includes: hot water and indirect waste connections to owner-furnished dishwasher." The proposal is the document you will point at, and it should name the handoff as plainly as the clarification did.

8. Carry the list onto the job. The handoff list goes into the job file and onto the truck set, so the lead knows on day one which items to wait for, which to receive and which to leave alone. A clean bid with a list that stays in the estimator's folder still ends with a tech installing something that was owner work.

The worked sweep

A small HVAC shop is bidding the mechanical scope on a restaurant tenant improvement. The sweep through the full set and project manual turns up seven hits that touch the shop's work.

HANDOFF LIST - TI restaurant, mechanical bid

#  ITEM              WHERE      PHRASE         PARTY
1  RTU-1 setting     M-601 nt3  by others      not named
2  RTU-1 curb        M-601 nt2  by Div 07      roofer
3  RTU disconnect    E-201 kn7  by Div 26      electrical
4  Hood exhaust fan  M-601 sch  OFCI           owner/us
5  Walk-in cooler    A-101      NIC            owner
6  Starters EF-1,2   23 05 13   furn Div 23,   us/elec
                     2.4.B      inst Div 26
7  Gas to range      P-101 kn4  by others      not named

OPEN AFTER STEP 4: 1, 4, 6, 7        (4 of 7)

Working the list:

• Item 1, RTU setting. "By others" with no party. The shop's bid assumed no crane. The scope letter from the general contractor assigns "crane and rigging" to the general contractor's own crane subcontractor. Closed by the scope letter; written into the exclusions.
• Item 2, curb. Named, Division 07. The shop's work starts at the curb top: unit gasket, set and secure. Inclusion line written to say so. Not open.
• Item 3, disconnect. Named, Division 26. Not open. The shop notes it needs the disconnect live before startup and puts that date dependency in its schedule notes.
• Item 4, hood exhaust fan, OFCI. The owner's kitchen equipment supplier furnishes the fan and the shop installs it. Open questions: who receives and stores it, who furnishes the curb adapter, and whether the fan arrives with its motor starter. Sent as one item with a proposed answer for each.
• Item 5, walk-in cooler, NIC. Owner work. The shop confirms that the refrigeration lines and condensing unit are part of that NIC package, because the drawing shows a condensing unit on the roof beside RTU-1 and an estimator could read it as mechanical. Written into the exclusions; not left as an open question because NIC is unambiguous.
• Item 6, starters. The spec makes the shop furnish and the electrician install. Open: who confirms voltage and enclosure rating before the submittal goes in. The shop's proposed answer is that it submits with the electrical contractor's sign-off on the cut sheet.
• Item 7, gas to the range. "By others" on the plumbing sheet with no party. The shop holds a gas fitting crew, but the bid did not include kitchen gas. Open, and the most likely to land on whoever is there first.

Four of seven lines were open after step 4. Item 1 closed on the scope letter in step 5, so three lines (4, 6 and 7) went out as one clarification letter four days before bid. All three came back answered in writing: items 4 and 6 as proposed, item 7 assigned to the plumbing subcontractor, which reached the shop's proposal as an exclusion naming the plumber. Open lines at signing: zero.

What changes the answer

Design-build or negotiated work. If the shop is designing its own scope, there is no "by others" from a designer to read. The handoff list still exists but the shop writes it, and the same seven questions become lines in its own proposal.

Owner-direct contracts. With no general contractor, there is no scope letter to close items in step 5, so every "by others" goes to the owner as a question and the answers carry more weight.

A public bid with a fixed bid form. On many public jobs, a bidder cannot qualify a bid with exclusions, and a qualified bid may be rejected. The clarification route then runs through the designer's pre-bid question period and comes back as an addendum. See related: How to Check an Addendum Against Your Bid.

How the sweep fails in the field

The OFCI item arrives without its parts. The owner's equipment shows up with no mounting rail, no gasket and no fittings, and the installer's estimate had none of them because "owner furnished" was read as "complete." The clarification in step 6 should name every loose part.

The answer was verbal. A project manager says on a call that the general contractor will handle the gas, then leaves the job. With no written answer, the next manager reads the drawings fresh.

A later addendum reopens a line. An addendum adds a note moving the disconnect from Division 26 to "by mechanical." If the list is not re-checked against each addendum, the closed line is silently reopened.

How to check the sweep is complete

• Every discipline's sheets and every spec division that references your work have been searched, and you can name the sheets that produced no hits.
• Every line on the list has a party named, either from the documents, the scope letter or a written answer.
• The count of open lines at signing is zero, or each remaining one is an exclusion in the proposal.
• The written clarifications are filed with the subcontract and a copy is on the truck set.

References

• See related: Reading Bid Documents + Scope Reference
• See related: The MasterFormat Divisions a Service Trade Lives In
• See related: How to Check an Addendum Against Your Bid
• See related: The Paper That Changes a Job: RFI to Change Order