A tender with thirty drawings
A main contractor sends a tender for the painting package on a new school building: thirty drawings, a specification with six coating systems, and a priced schedule to return. The deadline is ten days away. The estimator, who is also the owner, measures wall areas from the drawings with a scale rule and a calculator, counts doors, adds up ceilings, and works out which system applies to which area.
A room schedule is missed on page twelve. The price goes in without it.
Why tenders take so long
Commercial painting is priced from areas, items and systems. Measuring by hand is slow and error-prone, and matching each area to the right specification system is fiddly. The priced schedule rarely matches how you measured.
- Areas are measured from drawings by hand.
- The specification's coating systems are not linked to areas.
- Your rates per system and surface are not written down in one place.
- The main contractor's schedule is filled manually.
- There is no check that every drawing and room was measured.
What slow pricing costs
Tenders not priced because there was no time. Missed areas that you pay for after winning. Rushed prices that lose good work or win bad work. And the owner's time taken from running jobs.
Commercial tenders also come in bursts. Several main contractors might send packs in the same fortnight, often for jobs that will not start for months. Without a quick way to measure and price, a decorating contractor ends up choosing which tenders to price based on time rather than on which jobs they actually want, which is the wrong way round.
And a missed area in a tender is not a small mistake. Once the price is accepted, the painting package has to be delivered for the price given, and the missed room or elevation is painted at your expense. The measuring checklist exists to catch that before submission.
The takeoff and pricing tool we build
- PDF drawings are loaded and scaled, and areas, lengths and items are measured on screen by drawing over them.
- Each measurement is tagged with its room, surface type and the specification system that applies, such as mist coat plus two coats on new plaster.
- Your rates per system, surface and height are held in one place, and applied to each measurement.
- A checklist of drawings and rooms shows what has been measured and what has not.
- The tool fills the main contractor's priced schedule in their format, with totals checked.
- After the tender, winning prices seed the valuation tool, so progress is valued against what you priced.
| Input | Source |
|---|---|
| Areas and items | Measured from PDF drawings |
| Coating system | Specification, linked to each area |
| Rates | Your rates by system and surface |
| Access | Heights and access allowances |
| Output | Priced schedule in their format |
Tendering with time to think
Measuring is faster and more accurate. Nothing is missed without being flagged. Prices are consistent because they use the same rates. And the estimator has time to review the risky parts of the tender, like access and programme.
Over time, the tool also builds a record of what you priced and what you won. Comparing winning and losing tenders by type of building and main contractor shows where your rates are competitive and where they are not, which is hard to see when each tender is priced from scratch.
Is tendering stretching you?
- You measure drawings with a scale rule.
- You have skipped tenders for lack of time.
- You have won work and found areas were missed.
- Rates are in your head.
- Filling priced schedules takes hours.