Are you maximizing your chances of securing a tender?
There are many reasons why tenders are won and lost: One of these is what you do with specifications when pricing.
When ‘rating up’, there are a couple of things that you can do, to make your rates more competitive without having to ‘skip’ coats:
1. New Woodwork: The specification always asks for primer, but it is important that when ‘rating up’, you exclude this. Most timber is now delivered ‘pre-primed’ to site. In your tender letter, make sure you tell the Principal Contractor that priming is excluded:
‘Priming to New Timber: Excluded: Assumed ALL new timber is delivered ‘factory primed’ to site. Any priming carried out by ourselves would be deemed as ‘additional’ to this tender submission’
2. Ceilings and Walls: Always base your mist coat paint on the cheapest contract white emulsion you can get. Qualify this in your tender letter.
‘Mist Coat to Ceilings and Walls: This tender is based on Macpherson/Leyland/Armstead contract matt emulsion (white only)’
Other factors include:
1. Daily Painter Charge: Are you competitive?
2. Is the project far from you so that more local painters are more likely to be cheaper?
3. After each tender submission, are you chasing up tenders to see if your Principal Contractor secured the project? If they didn’t, are you then contacting the Architect to find out the successful Principal Contractor and then making contact with them to see if you can submit your tender to them? In this way you are maximising your chances of securing a tender.
At the end of the day, tenders cost money. It is is critical that at the very least, you make sure your tender always gets to the successful Principal Contractor.
4. Have you worked for the Contractor before? Let’s face it, if you haven’t worked for a contractor before they are already likely to have their ‘favoured’ painting contractor(s). However, sometimes, it is just a case of ‘right place, right time’: The Contractor is looking for another painting contractor, your price is ‘right’ and suddenly you become the new ‘favoured’ contractor. My feeling is that after 5-6 tenders, if you haven’t secured a project, you need to speak with the Contractor QS(s) to see if it is purely down to price. If it is, then you need to make a commercial decision whether or not you can ‘tighten’ your prices?
Happy Estimating
Mark-Painting Estimator