WHY YOU LOSE BIDS YOU SHOULD WIN.
Losing a bid you priced correctly is usually a closing failure rather than a pricing one. Three do most of the damage. A scope that doesn't match the GC's scope sheet, so your number gets compared against a different quantity of work. Qualifications and exclusions written in a way that reads as risk the GC has to carry itself. And no follow up, so a number that was a few thousand dollars apart never got a second conversation. Underneath all three is the absence of a bid log, which means nobody can tell you which of the three is happening to you.
Winning too much is the same problem read from the other end. A sub who wins most of what he bids isn't closing well, he is the cheapest, and the cause is usually inside his own overhead rate rather than out in the market. That's why the closing process and the hit ratio are two separate examinations. The ratio tells you the pricing is off and roughly in which direction. The closing record tells you whether the losses were price, scope, paperwork, or silence, and only one of those four is corrected by changing the number.
WHAT IT MEANS.
The bid closing process is everything that happens between submitting a number and receiving an award: the scope reconciliation, the qualifications attached to the price, the follow up conversation, and the record of what was bid and what became of it.
The bid log is the whole apparatus and it's not complicated. Every bid gets the date, the general contractor, the scope, the number submitted, the qualifications attached, the outcome, and where you finished if you can find out. Six months of that and the reason becomes obvious without anybody arguing about it. Contractors resist the log because it feels like paperwork stacked on top of estimating, and it's the only record that will tell you whether to reprice, rewrite the qualifications, or start calling.
There's a second reason to keep it, which has nothing to do with losses. The log is where bid margin gets compared against the margin the job produced when it closed, per general contractor and per project type. A sub who wins a lot of work from one GC at a margin that consistently comes in under the bid has found something more useful than a closing problem, and only the log will show it.
Winning most of what you bid is the same failure from the opposite side, and it's the one owners read as a strength. A high award rate on competitive work usually means the number is low for a reason inside your own overhead rate rather than a reason out in the market, and every award locks that in for the length of the job. So the log has to record the wins as carefully as the losses, because a run of easy awards is information too. The hit ratio page covers the calculation and the range behind that reading.
THREE REASONS THE AWARD WENT ELSEWHERE.
Your scope and the GC's scope sheet aren't the same scope
You priced what the drawings show and the GC is comparing bids against a scope sheet that includes two items you excluded and excludes one you carried. Your number then reads high against a bid that covers less work. Nobody at the GC is being difficult, they're comparing what's in front of them, and the reconciliation is your job to do before the number goes out.
The qualifications read as risk rather than as terms
A page of exclusions written defensively tells a general contractor that whatever isn't covered becomes their problem to solve at their cost. The same content written as conditions, with a price attached to each one, reads as a contractor who knows their work. Two identical numbers with different qualification pages aren't two identical bids, and the estimator picking between them knows which one creates fewer phone calls.
Nobody follows up, so a close number stays close
A bid a few thousand dollars off the award is a conversation that never happened. GCs award off the number in front of them because there's no reason to ask, and the sub who calls to confirm scope and ask where he stood is often the sub who gets one more chance. It costs an hour a week and most subcontractors never do it.
WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE IN DOLLARS.
Take twenty competitive bids in a year at an average value of $180,000, so $3.6M of work priced. Win five and that's $900,000 of it. If three of the fifteen losses finished within a few percent of the award and one of those three would have moved on a phone call, the call was worth $180,000 of revenue against the hour it takes to make. Every figure in that example is illustrative arithmetic rather than a benchmark. The reason the example can be run at all is that the bid log holds the numbers, and without it the three near misses are indistinguishable from the twelve that were never close.
A hit ratio is one number and it moves for four different reasons. Six months of bid records separate them: price losses cluster around a figure, scope losses cluster around one general contractor's scope sheet, qualification losses cluster around one clause, and silence losses have no cluster at all, because nobody called. The ratio tells you something is off. This is the examination that happens afterward.
THE CLOSING PROCESS, WRITTEN DOWN.
Date, general contractor, scope, number submitted, qualifications attached, outcome, and where you finished if you can find out. Most estimating files record the submission and stop, which is the half that can't teach you anything. Six months of outcomes turns an argument about pricing into a reading of a record, and the record is usually not saying what everybody assumed.
Somebody reads the GC's scope sheet line by line against what was priced, and any difference either gets priced or gets stated in the cover letter in plain terms. Ten minutes of that stops the most common loss on this page, which is a correct number being compared against a smaller quantity of work.
Exclusions get converted into conditions wherever a price can be put against them, so the general contractor can see what it costs to include the item rather than having to solve it themselves. The bid then reads as complete with options rather than as partial with disclaimers, and it survives a side by side comparison better.
One pass a week through everything submitted and not yet awarded, confirming receipt, confirming scope, and asking where you stood on anything already awarded. That last question is where the closing data comes from, and it is published in full. Contractors who make the call for six months know things about their own pricing that no report would have told them.
THE OUTPUTS, NAMED.
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.
Pricing
| 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.
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