精东影视

So another year begins and listening to all the pundits this is going to be tougher than the last one.

But what of tender prices? Inflation is allegedly running at near 4% (although it feels a lot higher to me) so tender prices on the up? No, not a bit.

So what鈥檚 happening?

Well I wonder how many tender bids are going in at lunchtime today that have been priced below net cost? I鈥檇 never be able to prove it but I suspect nearly all of them.

So why is that?

Well as we know there isn鈥檛 a lot of work around, and there鈥檚 probably still too many of us chasing that amount of work too鈥�and clients know that. So more of you are being asked to tender鈥�and do you consider you are pricing against like for like competition? No, is the most likely answer.

So what to do?

Go in as cheap as you can, beat the opposition, keep your team intact, gain a contribution to your overhead, pray the job goes well, there are lots of variations and changes to claw some money back, over value the job on interim valuations, screw the supply chain further (after all they never put in a sensible bid at tender stage, and if they did you ask them to knock it by 15-20% anyway), and oh that the client still has the funds from his finances to pay you!

But consultants you鈥檙e not helping either.

Don鈥檛 stuff your tenders with huge provisional sums because designs haven鈥檛 been resolved or you haven鈥檛 made your mind up, or the client hasn鈥檛. Don鈥檛 include provisional quantities or items, keep your specifications tight and detailed to what you want. Don鈥檛 send out vague, confusing, incomplete, conflicting designs, drawings and information as the contractor will see this as a great opportunity. And please stop issuing tender addendums when you鈥檝e only just sent out the documents, send it all out once and be done with it!

And finally don鈥檛 burn everything you can possibly think of and put it on a cd, as all the contractors do is the same, but pass it on to the supply chain. And what happens? The man in a van gets it, doesn鈥檛 understand it, either doesn鈥檛 bother with it, puts in a price because he thinks he understands it, only to find he鈥檚 committed to something he doesn鈥檛 understand.

Then he doesn鈥檛 do the job and leaves everyone with a problem.

By way of an side, but on the same vein, we鈥檝e got a project in the office that we are doing the bills of quantities for the contractor. Tucked away in part of the tender documents there鈥檚 a clause that states if your bid is above 拢7.2m don鈥檛 bother sending it in! (The job has already been tendered last year at around 拢8M, sent out again with no design changes, what do they expect I ask?)

So clients don鈥檛 expect the impossible, but if you do ask for it be warned as if you step out of line, dither over a decision, play with the contractors cash flow expect the worst as it will come back and bite you!

Thanks to John Langford for his tweet for being the inspiration for this.

Derek Mynott is the managing director of quantity surveyor GF Partnership and a

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