Where the Money Gets Lost as a Job Moves Through Its Stages

Pricing at tender stage

The first place a job can go wrong is before you have even won it. A price built in a hurry at tender stage, with quantities rushed and rates copied from the last job, sets the budget for everything that follows. If the number is wrong here, every stage after it inherits the problem.

The gap between winning the job and starting on site

Between being awarded a job and getting on site, drawings change, subcontractor quotes come back different to what was allowed, and the programme shifts. This is the point to go back through the original price and check it still holds before you are committed to it on site. Leave it and you find out the hard way once work has started.

Your duties do not stop at pricing

Under CDM 2015, a contractor carries real duties on site, not just pricing responsibility. Managing risk, coordinating with other contractors, keeping welfare and site set up in order all sit with you once work starts, alongside keeping the cost picture up to date as the job runs.

Keeping cost control once work is underway

Once you are on site, the original price becomes a moving target. Variations come in, quantities change once you open things up, and material costs move. A control estimate, updated as the job progresses rather than left untouched until final account, is what keeps you ahead of where the money actually is instead of finding out at the end.

Handover and the final reckoning

By the time you get to handover, the final account should already reflect everything that happened on site, not come as a surprise. Keeping the cost side current through every stage, from tender to handover, is what makes that final conversation with the client straightforward instead of a fight.

Send your drawings over at any stage of a job and we will price or re-price the work properly. See a sample estimate to see how we set it out.

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