Before you commit to a bid date, get the scope nailed down

You get the enquiry on a Tuesday, the client wants a number by Friday. You skim the drawings, price what's obviously there, and send it off. Two weeks later you're on site and half the job wasn't on the drawings you priced from. Wrong revision, missing details, a spec that changed after you'd already submitted.

That's not bad luck. That's a bid date that came before the scope was actually settled.

Know what you're pricing before you price it

Every trade has a version of this. The groundworker who prices off a site plan with no levels on it. The fit-out contractor who prices a spec that gets revised the week after tender. The problem isn't speed, it's pricing a moving target. Once you commit to a number, that number has to survive contact with the real job.

Settle the drawings before the clock starts

The fix is simple to say and hard to do under time pressure: get the current drawings, get the current spec, and don't start pricing until you know that's what you're actually building. If a revision lands halfway through your takeoff, stop and check what changed rather than guessing it doesn't matter.

This is where having someone measure the job properly, off whatever drawings you've actually got, earns its keep. We take the drawings you've been issued, measure the whole job to NRM2, and hand you back a bill of quantities that reflects exactly what's on those drawings, no more and no less. If something's missing or unclear on the drawings themselves, you'll see it in the takeoff before you commit to a price, not after you've won the job.

Bid on a settled scope, not a rushed guess

A bid date is only a problem if you're still working out what you're pricing when it arrives. Get the scope measured properly first and the date stops being the enemy.

Send your drawings and we'll measure the whole job to NRM2 before you commit to anything. See a sample estimate if you want to see what a proper takeoff looks like before you decide.

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