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How are construction tenders invited, and where does EstimateOne fit?
Tenders arrive in three common ways: a direct request from a builder or client you know, a public advertisement by a government agency or large owner, or an invitation through an online tendering platform. EstimateOne is one of those platforms, and it is the one Sami Strategy Co. works in.
EstimateOne states its purpose as: "We help builders, subcontractors and suppliers connect and win more work." 1 It describes "exclusive tender opportunities for 100s of trades" and says it is free to sign up, with a free account giving access to a limited number of tenders per month. 1 Builders upload and manage their own listings, and those listings include the tender documents, such as drawings and scopes of work. 1
Because builders manage their own listings, package quality varies from one builder to the next. And because a free account carries a monthly limit, choosing which invitations to price is worth doing deliberately.
Test each invitation before opening the documents. Is the work in your trade and within your capacity at the likely start date? Can you work with this builder on payment and program? Is there time to price it properly before the closing date? A rushed price tends to carry a gap or a rate error, and builders remember quotes that needed correcting. If you pass, tell the builder promptly.
How do you read tender documents and find scope gaps?
A trade package normally contains the drawings, a specification, the builder's scope of works, the proposed contract conditions and a program, sometimes with a bill of quantities or site reports. Addenda issued during the tender period form part of the package and take precedence over what they amend.
Read the documents against one another. The builder's scope of works shows what the builder thinks your package includes, the drawings show what is to be built, and the specification sets the products, standards and workmanship. Wherever the three disagree you have found a gap or a risk, and each one needs a decision before the price is final: price it, exclude it in writing, or ask the builder.
These are the usual places to look:
- Work that appears on the drawings with no matching specification clause, and the reverse
- Interfaces between trades, such as penetrations, fire stopping, flashings, patching and making good
- Open wording such as "as required" or "allow for" with no defined extent
- Site costs the scope leaves silent: access, cranage, scaffolding, waste removal and protection of finished work
- Contract terms that move risk onto your package: retention, liquidated damages, defects liability and payment timing
- Program assumptions: the duration allowed for your trade and the number of site visits
Raise anything that affects the price as a written request for information well before the closing date, and keep the reply with the tender. If no reply comes in time, price on a stated assumption and put that assumption in your qualifications. The written trail protects the price if the scope is argued about after award.
How should you price a tender with real rates and declare exclusions?
Build the price from your own take-off of the tender drawings, even when the builder issues a bill of quantities, because a shortfall in someone else's figures comes out of your margin. Note any differences from the bill in your qualifications.
Real rates reflect what the work will cost on this site at the time it is built: current supplier quotes with their validity checked against the likely order date, labour at the outputs your crews actually achieve with on-costs included, plant and access equipment, supervision, and the preliminaries the contract places on your package. If the start is months away, state how long the price holds and whether any items are subject to rise and fall. Keep margin as a separate line so you know what you have to negotiate with.
Exclusions are part of the offer. The builder's estimator adds back the cost of anything you exclude before comparing quotes, a step called levelling, so a low headline price with a long list of exclusions can finish higher once levelled. Group exclusions under clear headings, write each one specifically, and avoid blanket phrases such as "anything not shown". Where you priced an item the documents left unclear, list it under inclusions as well, because it shows the builder you read the package.
Where an item cannot be measured from the documents, offer a provisional sum or a schedule rate and state what it covers, so the main price stays firm.
How do evaluators score tenders? A Victorian Government example
Every client scores tenders somehow. Public clients have to write the method down, and the Victorian Government's construction procurement rules show what a formal evaluation weighs.
Victorian Government Construction Instruction 3.7.3 makes four evaluation criteria mandatory: value for money, which "must be the primary determinant of the procurement outcome" and includes price; occupational health and safety (OHS) management; industrial relations management; and past performance. 2 Two of those criteria are tied to thresholds. OHS criteria are required for Works over $750,000 and for Construction Services over $300,000, both GST inclusive, and industrial relations criteria are required for Works over $750,000 and for Construction Services when the Fair Jobs Code applies. 2
On Victorian Government construction work, value for money "must be the primary determinant of the procurement outcome", and price is one part of it. 2
The client also has to decide how much each criterion counts. Instruction 3.7.1(b) requires the evaluation plan to set out the "relative importance and associated weightings of the evaluation criteria", while telling tenderers what those weightings are is optional under 3.7.2(b). 2 Direction 3.7 took effect on 1 July 2018 and Instruction 3.7 on 30 December 2018, and Revision 3 of 1 September 2024, the revision current when this guide was checked, increased the dollar thresholds. 2
For a tenderer, this means price is weighed together with evidence. Where weightings are published, spread your effort in proportion to them. Where they are withheld, answer every listed criterion under its own heading, in the client's order, with something an evaluator can check: a safety management system and recent site records for OHS, your workforce arrangements for industrial relations, and similar completed projects with referees for past performance.
Private builders seldom publish criteria, yet the same four questions sit behind their decisions: your price once exclusions are added back, whether your crews follow site safety rules, whether your labour arrangements could disrupt the site, and whether your last job with them finished on program. Answer them before they are asked.
What goes on a tender submission checklist?
A complete submission is one the client can evaluate without coming back to you. When several quotes arrive for one package, an incomplete one costs the estimator time and is easy to set aside. Check each item below against the invitation before you lodge.
- The price in the form the invitation asks for, with every schedule or rate column filled in
- Each addendum listed by number and date, confirming the price includes it
- Inclusions, exclusions and qualifications under clear headings
- Clarifications: each question you raised, the answer and its date, and any assumption you priced on
- Any alternative, priced separately from the conforming offer
- Program assumptions, lead times and the access you need from the builder
- The validity period of the price
- Insurances, licences, registrations and safety documents the invitation requests
- Any departures you seek from the contract conditions, and a named contact for questions
Keep the covering letter short: what you are offering, what you have excluded and where you depart from the documents. If a public client has published criteria, use its headings in its order.
Clarifications earn a section of their own, because where an assumption is missing the estimator levelling your quote has to guess, usually on the cautious side.
Alternatives can win work when they save time or cost, provided they sit beside a conforming offer. Show the alternative separately with the saving, any change to program or warranty, and the approval it would need. A tender that offers only an alternative risks being treated as non-conforming.
What should you do after the tender closes?
The closing date is the halfway point of a tender. Confirm that the builder received a complete submission, then call the estimator a few days later to ask whether anything in the price or qualifications needs explaining. That call often surfaces a misunderstanding you can fix while the quotes are still being levelled.
Treat post-tender clarifications as part of the tender. Answer each request to price a change, remove an exclusion or extend the validity in writing, with the price effect shown. A request to sharpen your price is often a sign that you are in contention, and a written answer keeps any concession tied to a defined scope.
When a tender is lost, ask for feedback while the comparison is fresh and record it against the tender in your register. Patterns across several losses carry the lessons: repeated losses on price in one trade point to a rate or output problem, and losses on qualifications point to how the documents are being read.
When a tender is won, check that the contract matches what you tendered, including addenda and agreed clarifications, and brief the site team on every qualification before work starts.
How does a tender register show your tender success rate?
A tender register is one record of every invitation, what you did with it and how it ended. A spreadsheet is enough, provided it covers every invitation, including the ones you passed on, and is kept the same way each month. Record at least these fields:
- Builder or client, project, location and trade package
- Invitation date, closing date and any extensions
- Decision to price or pass, with the reason
- Price lodged, margin and the main exclusions
- Addenda and requests for information, with dates
- Result, awarded value if the builder shares it, and feedback received
- Next follow-up date and the person responsible for it
Your tender success rate is the number of tenders won divided by the number priced, and the register lets you calculate it by builder, by trade and by project type. A builder who invites you to every job and rarely awards may be using your quote as a check on its regular trade, and a project type where you win at your normal margin is one to pursue. Measure your own rate consistently and compare it with your own history.
Check the register monthly for open tenders that have gone quiet and need a call, and review it quarterly to decide where the next quarter's pricing time should go.
How to win construction tenders as a repeatable process
Winning tenders consistently comes from doing the ordinary steps in this guide well every time, and recording every result so the next tender starts from evidence.
Capacity limits all of it, because each tender priced properly takes time that a business running jobs on site may not have. Sami Strategy Co. is a Melbourne consultancy of EstimateOne specialists that prices and lodges tenders for subcontractors and builders, with a scope and contract review on each one. The tendering services and EstimateOne tendering support pages explain how that works.