Your lighting project may be driven by energy savings, the potential return on investment, lowering your maintenance expenses over time, or sustainability goals, but one thing is for sure—comparing apples to apples among the different proposals you’ve received is easier said than done. However, a simple scorecard and some specific questions can help make it easier.  

One factor is key to ranking prospective contractors, said Jared Schneider, sales manager for Pacific Energy Concepts (PEC) Dallas, in his presentation at the 2026 North Texas Facilities Expo—figure out your facility’s most important driver for your lighting project, then tailor your scorecard accordingly. 

Even among LED projects, there can be a lot of variation in bids, Schneider explained: 

• One contractor may be quoting you prices for a name brand of lighting solutions, while another has a brand you’ve never heard of, and the third is missing a spec sheet. 
• The contractors also may have used different math to calculate their bids. How did they calculate your return? Can you make everyone explain how they got to the numbers they gave you?
• What assumptions did they make? Are they based on actually having walked your facility and examined your existing fixtures? They may be assuming wattages or operating hours incorrectly.
• The scope of projects can differ. Controls may be included in one bid, but not another. “Something to keep an eye out for is egress or emergency lighting,” Schneider said. “That one can have big implications.” 

How to Weigh Varying Proposals 

Any contractor submitting a bid should have walked your facility and audited the existing lighting, Schneider explained. No audit and job walk means no proposal. “That’s one filter that can throw out bad proposals before you even read them,” Schneider said. “A real audit captures what’s there now—the fixture types, wattages, controls, layout, mounting heights, racking, what’s in the way. We want to measure light levels and footcandles, or lux for some facilities. And we don’t want to guess—we want to take as much actual information as we can and build real proposals off of that.” 

A bid built from a fixture count you emailed to the contractor is a red flag too, Schneider added. An emailed fixture count can be helpful background information, but the ideal contractor would have examined those fixtures in the field to look at access, shadowing, and other factors that weren’t in your email. 

Build Your Scorecard 

After you’ve thrown out estimates put together at someone’s desk rather than in the field, it’s time to compare contractors. Every proposal should have four things: 

1. Fixture quality and performance. Is what you’re putting up in the ceiling actually built to last? Look at whether the fixtures are DesignLights Consortium listed and UL certified—most utilities won’t provide rebates for fixtures that aren’t DLC-listed. Check out the L70 documentation for the lighting named in the bid—does it specify the rated lifetime under the average temperatures in your facility? Perhaps your facility will subject its lighting to dust, debris, or humidity—how will that affect the rated lifetime? 
2. Proposed lighting design. “We always say you wouldn’t build a house without a blueprint. You shouldn’t do a lighting project without a photometric,” Schneider said. The photometric document should account for ceiling height, mounting height, and what your current lighting looks like, and align the proposed upgrade to some sort of standard, whether that’s a standard your facility has or recommendations from the Illuminating Engineering Society.
3. Energy savings and financial impacts. Don’t let your contractors make assumptions on what you’re paying for power, Schneider said. Instead, try one of these two strategies: give them the price of power you’d like them to use for their assumptions, or give them as many previous power bills as you can so they can see how your spending would be affected in different usage tiers. 
4. Contractor services and what happens after the project is installed. This could be a warranty, a satisfaction guarantee, or some other post-project communication. What are you actually getting back if something goes wrong?

5 Questions to Take to Your Next RFP 

Ready to evaluate proposals? Schneider urged Facilities Expo attendees to ask these five questions the next time you send out an RFP: 

• Did you visit our facility? If not, stop there—no site visit means the proposal isn’t credible.
• Can you show me the photometric model for our building?
• What baseline and utility rate did you use?
• Who owns the incentive paperwork, and what’s your warranty response process in writing?
• Can I see the spec sheets for every fixture? 

A contractor who can show their work and credibly answer all of these questions may not be the cheapest option on paper, but as Schneider pointed out, the cheapest proposal is rarely the best deal in the end.