Read the returnable schedule first, and price after
Most tenders are lost before the pricing starts, by pricing a different job from the one being asked for. Before a number goes anywhere near a form:
- The returnable schedule tells you what must come back and in what form. A tender that misses a returnable document is not a cheap tender, it is a disqualified one.
- The pricing document tells you whether you are pricing a bill of quantities, a schedule of rates, or a lump sum against a specification. These are three different risks, and the third one is the one that ends contractors.
- The conditions of contract tell you the payment period, the retention, the defects liability period and the penalties. Those four numbers decide whether the job is worth having at any price.
In South Africa, public sector tenders run under the cidb’s Standard for Uniformity in Construction Procurement, which is what makes tenders comparable and tells you the rules the client is bound by — including the minimum period before a cancelled tender can be re-advertised.
The preliminaries are where the money is quietly lost
Preliminaries — site establishment, supervision, plant standing on site, security, insurances, clearing on completion — are the most under-priced line in most small contractors’ bids. They are also the line the client can least easily argue with, because they are real costs with dates against them.
Price them from the programme you intend to actually run, not from the number of weeks the client would like to hear. A job that overruns by two months costs you two more months of preliminaries, and nobody pays that back to you at the end.
Cash flow is a price, not an afterthought
Take the contract’s own terms and work out when the money actually arrives:
- the payment period after certification,
- the retention held back from each payment,
- the half released at practical completion, and
- the balance at the end of the defects liability period.
Then work out how long you are funding the job from your own account. That is the real cost of the tender, and on a 30-day payment term with 10% retention it is a materially bigger number than the one on the pricing document. If the bid only works when payment arrives on time, it is worth saying so in the tender rather than discovering it on site.
Record what you bid — it is your evidence later
The priced tender you submitted is the starting point of every argument you will have about variations, omissions and the final account. Keep it, and keep the documents you priced it from.
Two things people forget to keep:
- your own build-up, as distinct from the submitted rates — one is your price, the other is your reasoning, and you will need the reasoning;
- the supplier and subcontractor quotes you invited and received. When a variation is priced later, those quotes are what make your rate defensible rather than asserted.
What this looks like in the system
A tender is a record, not a document: reference, title, status, items, quotes, best and due date — the documents you are pricing, the bid you will submit and the closing date, on one register.
New Tender opens one. + New Supplier adds a supplier or subcontractor to the register you invite to quote, and the Best column shows where the quotes have landed. + Add to this job puts a recorded tender against the project you won it for — so the priced bid you submitted is the starting point the job is measured against, rather than a PDF nobody can find.