A site list with no counts
A council publishes a tender for fire alarm, extinguisher and fire door servicing across its buildings: libraries, depots, offices, community centres. The site list gives addresses, building types and approximate floor areas. It does not say how many detectors, call points, extinguishers or fire doors each building has. The pricing schedule asks for a price per site per year.
Your estimator guesses from experience, site by site. A library of a certain size probably has so many devices. A depot might have more extinguishers than you would think. The guesses are reasonable but inconsistent, and nobody records how they were made. When the contract is won, some sites turn out to be priced well below the work they need.
Why quantities are the weak point
Customers often do not know their own device counts, or hold them in records they cannot easily share. Yet quantities drive the work and the price.
- Tender site lists give areas and types, not device or unit counts.
- Estimators estimate from memory, site by site.
- Your own data from similar sites is not used systematically.
- Assumptions are not written down, so they cannot be checked or learned from.
- Sites with the most uncertainty are not identified for clarification questions.
What guessing costs
Underestimated quantities lock you into underpriced sites for the length of the contract. Overestimates lose bids. Inconsistent pricing across similar sites looks odd to evaluators. And when the contract starts, there is no record of what was assumed, which makes any later conversation about variations harder.
A bid tool that uses your own site data
We build a bid tool that estimates quantities from tender data and your existing records, for your estimator to review.
- The tender site list is imported and each site is classified by building type, size band and any other detail provided.
- Your existing serviced sites are grouped the same way, and your own ratios are worked out, for example devices per floor area band for offices, or extinguishers per building for depots.
- Each tender site gets an estimated quantity range for alarm devices, extinguishers and fire doors, based on your comparable sites, with a note of how many comparable sites the estimate rests on.
- Sites where the range is wide, or where you have few comparable sites, are flagged for clarification questions or a site visit if the tender allows it.
- Your pricing rules turn quantities into prices per site, and the estimator adjusts them where their knowledge differs.
- The assumptions for every site are recorded, and the pricing schedule is filled in.
| Bid step | By hand | With the bid tool |
|---|---|---|
| Quantities | Estimated from memory | Ranges from your comparable sites |
| Uncertain sites | Not identified | Flagged for clarification |
| Pricing | Site by site by feel | Your rules, then estimator review |
| Assumptions | Not recorded | Recorded per site |
The ratios come only from your own records. The tool does not use outside data or claim to know what a building contains. It shows how confident each estimate is.
After the bid
If you win, the recorded assumptions become the baseline for the first round of visits. As engineers record actual counts, the differences are visible site by site, which supports any conversation with the customer about variations your contract allows. They also improve your ratios for the next tender. If you lose, the priced schedule and assumptions are kept to compare with any published result.
Where the estimate is weakest
The tool is most useful where it admits what it does not know. A council depot of an unusual type, with only one comparable site in your records, shows a wide range and a low confidence note. That is the site your estimator writes a clarification question about, or asks to visit during the tender period, rather than spreading effort evenly across every building. Sites that closely resemble dozens you already service are priced from the rules with little further thought.
What your estimators gain
Quantities grounded in your own experience rather than individual memory. Clarification questions aimed at the sites that matter. Consistent pricing across similar sites. And a record that makes each bid better than the last.
Signs your tender pricing needs this
- Tenders arrive without device or unit counts per site.
- Estimators estimate quantities from memory.
- You have been caught out by underestimated sites after winning.
- Assumptions behind past bids are not recorded.
- You do not use your own site data when pricing new work.