PRICING RISK INTO YOUR BID.
Every construction bid carries risk. The question is whether you're pricing it systematically or by gut feel. A risk-based bid rates the specific risks on each project and prices them openly rather than hoping one blanket markup covers whatever happens. A GC who consistently pays in 75 days instead of 30 is financing $50K to $100K of your working capital per $1M of contract, and that cost belongs somewhere in the bid.
A blanket 5% contingency is a bet that every job carries the same risk, and no contractor believes that when you ask him directly. The interior finish job with complete drawings and a GC who pays in 30 days isn't the same bet as the civil job with two borings and a GC on his third lawsuit. Pricing them the same way means you win the dangerous work and lose the easy work, because your number is too high on the safe jobs and too low on the risky ones.
WHAT IT MEANS.
Bid risk pricing is the practice of rating each specific risk on a project and putting a dollar figure on it inside the bid, instead of covering everything with one blanket contingency percentage.
WHERE THE RISK GOES UNPRICED.
You add the same contingency to every job
A 5% contingency on a well-defined interior finish job and a 5% contingency on a complex civil project with limited geotechnical data are two completely different levels of coverage. Blanket contingency leaves you under-covered on the high-risk jobs and over-priced on the low-risk ones. The result is that you lose the easy bids and win the dangerous ones.
You're not pricing GC payment risk
A GC with a history of slow payment, disputes, and lien activity creates working capital risk that a GC with a clean payment record doesn't. Most subcontractors price the project scope and never price the GC. The cost of financing a slow payer, meaning the working capital you advance and the credit line you draw, belongs in the bid price.
You don't know what your actual risk exposure is
Site conditions, design completeness, schedule risk, material price exposure, and lower-tier sub reliability all create financial risk you can put a number on. Most contractors estimate these by instinct without a structured framework. The result is contingency that swings job to job and doesn't reflect the risk profile of any of them.
WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE IN DOLLARS.
A GC who consistently pays in 75 days instead of 30 is financing $50K to $100K of your working capital per $1M of contract, and that cost belongs somewhere in the bid. On a $1M contract with 60-day payment terms and an 8% line of credit, you're financing approximately $130K at 8%, which is about $10,400 in annual financing cost on that one contract. That number is either in your price or it's out of your margin.
HOW THE RISK GETS PRICED.
Rate each risk category high, medium, or low: geotechnical and subsurface conditions including how many borings you were given, design completeness meaning schematic against complete drawings, schedule risk meaning a fixed completion date against a flexible one, material price exposure meaning locked pricing against open market, GC payment history, and owner financial strength. Each high-risk category adds to your contingency. Each low-risk category lets you price tighter without giving up margin.
We track payment history by GC in ControlQore for every client: days to pay, how often a pay app gets disputed, and collections incidents. Before bidding for a new or infrequent GC, you see the payment history that should drive both the bid decision and the working capital contingency inside the price. The scorecard is built from your own paid invoices, not from reputation.
For significant bids we run a pre-bid risk analysis: rating each category, putting a dollar figure on the working capital the project consumes, and pointing at the specific risk items that should be priced as line items rather than buried in a blanket contingency. You go into the bid knowing what you're pricing and why. When the risks don't materialize, you also know how much of the closeout margin was contingency.
FLAT MONTHLY FEE. NO SURPRISES.
Three tiers, priced by your trailing twelve month revenue. Which one you're in depends on how much of the work you want off your desk. No hourly billing, no payroll, and no add-ons.
| Last 12 months revenue | Monthly fee |
|---|---|
| Up to $1M | $1,900 to $2,900 |
| $1M to $3.5M | $2,600 to $3,900 |
| $3.5M to $6.5M | $3,800 to $5,700 |
| $6.5M to $9.5M | $5,100 to $7,100 |
| $9.5M to $12.5M | $6,100 to $8,500 |
| $12.5M to $15.5M | $7,400 to $11,000 |
| $15.5M to $18.5M | $9,400 to $13,500 |
| $18.5M+ | Quoted individually |
Range reflects the three tiers below. Which one you're in depends on how much of the work you want off your desk. No payroll. No hidden line items.
You stop guessing.
You get the CFO work. Job costing built against the way you estimate, a 13 week cash forecast, monthly WIP, and a meeting every month that ends in decisions rather than a report.
Your bookkeeper keeps doing the books.
You stop touching the books.
Everything in Core, and we run the bookkeeping and the controllership as well. Nobody in your office is answering coding questions or chasing a reconciliation at month end.
We do the books. No payroll.
Every job shows its margin while it's still running.
Everything in Executive, plus the job costing and WIP platform set up, loaded with your cost codes, and managed for you every month. You never have to learn it.
We do the job costing.
FREQUENTLY ASKED.
