Pozar

Petitioner seeks a writ of mandate from this court (Code Civ. Proc., § 1085) to compel respondent (Caltrans) to follow its published procedure for resolving discrepancies in bid figures. We shall issue the writ.

The facts are not in dispute. On March 23, 1983, petitioner submitted a proposal on contract No. 09-071004, a highway construction project in Mono County. The proposal included a list of required products and services and an estimated quantity for each item. Petitioner supplied a price per unit and a total price for each item. One of the 37 required items was “Binder (Dust Palliative).” The estimated quantity was 90 tons. Petitioner proposed a unit price of $20 per ton and a total price of $18,000 for binder. One of the figures is obviously incorrect. If the correct unit price is $20, the total price would be $1,800. If the $18,000 total is correct, the correct unit price would be $200 per ton.

The discrepancy between the unit and total price is critical in this instance. If petitioner’s bid is calculated at $1,800 for binder, he is the lowest bidder on the contract. His total bid (the sum of 37 item totals) of $1,689,780 is $2,423 less than the next lowest of…