Which jobs to quote this month: a bid or no-bid triage for small building firms
Six questions, a scorer, and three verdicts for every enquiry: price it, ask one question first, or decline it this week.
The three figures come from the scorer further down this page and change as you answer it.
A design-and-build firm we know had ten live opportunities in one month and the time to price three of them properly. Six weeks later it had won none. Nothing was wrong with the enquiries. Nobody had decided, when each one came in, whether it was worth the pricing time.
This page is a way to make that decision in a couple of minutes per enquiry. Score six questions, read the verdict, then either price it, ask one question first, or decline it the same week.
Why pricing everything loses work
An estimator or a principal can price a residential extension properly in a day or two: a site visit, quantities measured off the drawings, rates you stand behind, and a covering email that lists what you have allowed for. Ten enquiries in a month is more days than you have.
What gives is the quality of each quote. No visit. Provisional sums where there should be measured rates. A contingency wide enough to lose on price to the firm that did visit. The quote goes out after the client's decision date, because you never asked what it was. The enquiries you did not price get no reply at all, and the architect who sent them notices that more than any price.
Pricing fewer jobs, properly, is the only lever you control. Which jobs is the question below.
The six questions
Each question scores 0, 1 or 2. They carry equal weight on purpose: a job that scores full marks on five and zero on the sixth still has a problem worth a phone call before you open the drawings.
Score the enquiry in front of you
The defaults describe a typical rear extension enquiry from an architect you have built for once, priced in a day and a half. Change them to match the enquiry on your desk.
The odds are rules of thumb by route to award: about one in six on an open tender, one in three on a shortlist, one in two when negotiated, nudged up or down by the relationship. Type in your own hit rate from last year as soon as you have counted it.
What to do with each verdict
Give it the hours, on the day
- Book the pricing hours in the diary today, not "this week".
- Ask two things by return: the decision date, and who decides.
- Visit the site before you price. Measured rates beat provisional sums.
- List what you have allowed for in the covering email, so the comparison with other bids is made on your terms.
One question, one call, then score it again
Do not open the estimate until the lowest-scoring question has an answer. The scorer tells you which one. Usually one call moves the job into one of the other two verdicts.
Asking about budget or competition is normal. Architects and QSs expect it, and a client who will not give a budget has told you something too.
Say no early and keep the relationship
A quick, honest no is remembered better than a quote that never came. Three lines will do:
Thank you for thinking of us for this. We are fully committed for the period you need and would not be able to price it properly by your date. If the programme moves we would like to look again, and in the meantime [firm] does this type of work well.
Keep the declined enquiries in a list with the reason. Some come back with a later start or a bigger budget.
Where the next enquiries come from
Triage only helps if enquiries keep arriving. The schemes that will need a builder next year are in the planning register now: the decision, the conditions still to be discharged, the architect who drew it. Read the decisions in your boroughs each week and you can call the practices you want to work with before they send the tender out to four other firms.
That is the part of the business Trails runs for the firms it works with: how it works for design and build firms. For the pricing itself, the live cost tracker keeps the indices behind your rates current.