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6. NEW BUSINESS (Continued) a Continued: The Chair: Apparently your manual, or the procedure up to now, didn't require you to put down ten percent for overhead and ten percent for profit, or something like that? Mr. Crighton: No, we have never been able to get a good idea of what the overhead costs and the administrative costs of these contracts are. The Chair: Everything I have been in this last year of course is small . . . concerning the clients I have had and so on, well even our building over there we did ... it was ten percent overhead and ten percent profit. They just list it right on the invoice. Is that right, Lloyd? Mr. Robinson: You're in the ball park, yes. I have a question, Keith, on this labor and material estimate -- that is never shown to the prospective.bidder is it? Mr. Crighton: No sir,. they get absolutely no idea of what our estimate is. That is absolutely confidential. Mr. Wiggins: Well, this, I would assume, is for the purpose of providing the advisory board, as well as your group, some idea of whether or not these bids are realistic. It seems to be pretty much of a guessing game in a way. I suppose there ought to be some way that you could plug in some sort of average figure, in terms of the items that are missing -- that of overhead, supervisory costs, and probably some contin- gency. They are foolish if they don't, because you run into a lot of contingencies. If fact, if they had more of them in the bidding, they would have less people up here, probably, for revising these jobs after they are started. The thing that I suppose causes me some concern, is how does the Bureau of Housing and the advisory board make a determination, be- cause we more or less have to follow in the same path, and I find it confusing. Mr. Crighton: Well, as far as the determination in concerned, if our estimate is generally within $2,000.00 of the bid price the advisory committee will not always, will sometimes, recommend approval on that. That's sort of an off -set rule of thumb that they use, but it does vary. For instance, if we have a contract, a bidder that has come in at $8,900.00 and the cost estimate was $6,900.00 and we checked the item prices and find some prices that are very much out of line . . . I'm talking about individual items within the contract . . . then the staff will recommend that the contract be rejected. It won't be recommended for approval. If we find a price that could offer a certain