A tender isn't just a price on a page. By the time you submit, you've pulled together a programme, a set of assumptions about what's included and what isn't, a breakdown the client's QS can pick apart line by line, and a number you're prepared to stand behind if you win. Miss any of that and you're either exposed once the contract's signed, or you look unprepared next to the other bids on the table.
So what is a construction tender, really? It's an offer to do a defined piece of work for a defined price, on defined terms. Every one of those "defined" words is where the risk lives.
The price is the part everyone looks at first. The scope, the terms and the assumptions are the parts that decide whether the price was any good.
How tendering usually works in the UK
The client (or their architect or QS) issues tender documents to a list of contractors: drawings, specification, sometimes a bill of quantities, the form of contract, and a return date. On private work that list is often a handful of invited firms. On public work there are usually more formal rules about who can bid and how bids are evaluated.
Some jobs are single stage: you price the whole thing from the documents and submit. Larger or more complex jobs are sometimes let in two stages, where a contractor is selected early on part of the price and the rest is worked up with the design team. For most small and medium builders, single stage is the norm, which means everything has to be priced before you know if you've won.
During the tender period you can usually raise queries. Use it. A question answered before the return date is far cheaper than an assumption argued about after the contract's signed.
What is a construction tender made of
Underneath the headline figure sits a priced breakdown, usually against a bill of quantities or your own measured takeoff, plus preliminaries, programme, method statement where it's asked for, and your exclusions and assumptions written down clearly. A typical submission pulls together:
- The form of tender. The signed offer, with the price and how long it stays open for acceptance.
- The priced breakdown. Against the client's bill if they issued one, or your own measured breakdown if they didn't.
- Preliminaries. Site set-up, supervision, welfare, scaffold, insurances, priced against the programme.
- A programme. How long the job takes and in what order, which drives the prelims.
- Exclusions and assumptions. What your price doesn't cover, and what it assumes about things you couldn't check.
- Anything else requested. Method statements, health and safety information, references, insurance certificates.
That exclusions list matters more than most contractors give it credit for. What you've excluded in writing is what protects you later when the client says "but I thought that was included."
Where the risk actually sits
The risk in a tender rarely sits in the big obvious items. It sits in the small ones nobody double-checked: a quantity carried over from a similar job rather than measured off this one, a rate that's a year out of date, an item on the drawings that never made it into the price at all. Any one of those turns a job you won into a job you're losing money on by week three.
If the client issued a bill of quantities, check it against the drawings. Depending on the contract, errors in a client's bill may be correctable, but you don't want to be relying on that argument after the fact. If there's no bill, the quantities are entirely your risk, which is all the more reason to measure them properly.
The contract terms carry risk as well. Is it a JCT form, an NEC contract, or the client's own amended terms? How long is the defects period, what retention is held, and are there damages for late completion? Asking what is a construction tender without reading the contract it leads to is like pricing a job without looking at the site.
The other place risk sits is time. A properly priced tender needs the drawings measured, quantities checked against the bill if there is one, and rates applied that reflect current UK costs, not last year's job. Do that under pressure the night before the deadline and something gets skipped.
Winning the tender is the easy part if the price is wrong. The skill is winning it at a number you'll still be happy with at final account.
Where we fit in
We take the measuring and pricing off your hands. Send us the drawings, plans or bill of quantities you've been given, and we measure the job to NRM2 and price it on current UK rates, local to the job. You get a full priced breakdown back before your bid is due, so what goes into your submission is built on quantities that were actually checked, not assumed. That's the core of our tender pricing work for contractors, on a fixed fee agreed before we start.
You still write the exclusions, set the margin and sign the form of tender. We make sure the numbers underneath hold up to the client's QS reading them line by line, which is its own test; there's more on that in a tender price has to survive being read by someone else.
A last check before you submit
Before any tender goes in, read your own exclusions list as if you were the client's QS looking for gaps. Then pick the three biggest lines in the price and ask where each quantity came from. If you can't point to a drawing, that's where the risk is sitting, and it's much cheaper to find it now than on site.