Tender Pricing Review
Risk mitigationFixed FeeFor Subcontractors & Main Contractors10 working days
I review your priced tender before it goes in: build-ups, preliminaries, qualifications, exclusions and risk items checked line by line against the enquiry documents, so the number you submit is one you can stand behind. The quantities and the price stay yours; the review makes sure the tender says what you think it says.
The problem
Most tenders are priced in the gaps between running live jobs, and it shows: rates carried from the last job without checking this job's access, programme or specification; preliminaries put in as a habit percentage; qualifications pasted from an old bid that contradict the enquiry. By the deadline nobody has read the whole submission end to end. An assumption that never made the exclusions becomes work you own, a rate typed against the wrong unit becomes the rate for the whole quantity, and the post-tender meeting finds every gap, conceded one at a time.
The solution
The review checks the tender the way the other side will. Every item is checked against the enquiry for coverage, so nothing is owned by silence; the build-ups are sense-checked against labour, plant and material logic and their quotes; the preliminaries against the programme and site conditions; and the arithmetic is proven, not trusted. Qualifications, exclusions and assumptions are redrafted into one schedule that survives a levelling meeting, and risk items are named, priced or excluded. One boundary: the quantities are yours. I do not take them off or estimate; I make your pricing complete, consistent and defensible.
Tender Pricing Review and Estimating & Tender Pricing are alternatives on a given tender, not a sequence. The review's value is that it is independent, so I do not review a price I built.
What you receive
The tender goes in checked instead of hoped about. You know what the price includes, what it excludes and where the risk sits, and the qualifications schedule keeps the scope you priced as the scope you own. The levelling meeting holds fewer ambushes, because the questions a buyer asks are the ones the review already answered, and a win is a real one: a number the job can be built for, taken with your eyes open rather than discovered from the inside.
The Handover Pack accompanies the work with its dates and sources, likely outcomes and responses, scope boundaries and ready-to-send correspondence where needed.
Turnaround: ten working days.
The working days start when the agreed scope and required inputs are available. Optional items do not hold the start unless the agreed scope says otherwise.
Need it faster? Ask on the first call: an express turnaround is quoted in writing where the diary allows it.
How it works
You tell me about the tender and the deadline
One call on the job, the buyer and when the tender has to go in, so the review is shaped to the time available. The first conversation is free and commits you to nothing.
Deadline Fixed First
The return date and time are recorded before anything else, and if time is too short we agree in writing what the review will and will not cover.
You send me the enquiry and your priced tender
The list below lets the review check the price against what was asked, rather than reading the number in a vacuum.
- A
The draft tender build-up
EssentialWithout it: There is nothing to review, so the coverage check cannot start
Where to find it: The estimating folder, or wherever the pricing spreadsheet lives.
Why I need it: The thing being reviewed
- B
The ITT and every addendum
EssentialWithout it: There is nothing to check the price against, so nothing can be reviewed
Where to find it: The enquiry email or the portal download, unedited.
Why I need it: What the price has to answer
- C
Drawings and specification
ImportantWithout it: The heaviest items go unchecked, and material products cannot be checked against the specification
Where to find it: Wherever your tender pack came from, the same enquiry email or portal download that carried the ITT, or the design team's issue if drawings were sent separately.
Why I need it: What is actually being built
- D
The programme assumed
ImportantWithout it: The preliminaries period cannot be tested against anything, and the period sensitivity check cannot run
Where to find it: The enquiry documents or the pre-tender correspondence.
Why I need it: The periods the prelims are priced against
Quality: start, finish and durations, clear enough to read the weeks off.
- E
Rate and resource assumptions
ImportantWithout it: The labour rate is rebuilt on Jack's own assumptions instead of the estimator's, so the finding is not tested against how the price was actually built
Where to find it: Your estimator's own workings, wherever gang sizes, outputs and all-in rates were noted down, even if that is only their notes on request.
Why I need it: What the rates are built from
- F
The prelims build-up
ImportantWithout it: The prelims cannot be tested item by item, and the largest single risk in most tenders goes unchecked
Where to find it: The estimating folder alongside the main build-up, or wherever whoever priced it kept the preliminaries workings.
Why I need it: The largest single risk in most tenders
- G
The submission deadline
EssentialWithout it: There is no way to know how much of the review can still be acted on before the tender has to go in
Where to find it: The ITT itself, on the invitation letter or the covering instructions; the portal listing usually repeats it too.
Why I need it: How long there is to fix what is found
- H
The basis-of-tender note
ImportantWithout it: What the price was intended to include is reconstructed from the build-up, which is slower and can only infer intent
Where to find it: Whoever assembled the submission. If the price was built under the relevant service the note is one of its two deliverables.
Why I need it: It states what the number already contains, so coverage is tested against what was intended rather than reconstructed
Copies are fine. Send what you have and I'll tell you what's missing. Download the client request PDF or editable Word version to pass to whoever holds the files.
- A
I check the price covers what the documents ask
Every item priced or deliberately excluded, the schedule's shape checked against the enquiry's, and anything the documents ask for that the price silently owns flagged.
I sense-check the build-ups, preliminaries and arithmetic
Rates tested against their build-ups and quotes, preliminaries checked as a priced list against the programme, and the extensions, carry-forwards and summary proven.
I redraft the qualifications and name the risk items
One schedule of exclusions, assumptions and attendances written to survive the levelling meeting, and each risk item priced or excluded rather than absorbed.
I hand you the marked-up tender and the decisions that matter
The pricing document marked line by line, the redrafted schedule, and a short note ranking what to fix and what to decide, each with the cost of leaving it alone.
Every Finding Traced
No figure reaches you until it traces to a working file and the total has been cast independently, so the corrections are arithmetic you can rely on.
You settle the final number and submit
The price stays your decision: you take the corrections you accept, set the number and submit in your own name.
I hand back the tender checked, not hoped about
Free Service Pack
A step-by-step Handbook, with the templates and working documents you need to carry out the work it covers yourself. You supply your own project information and records.
Follow the Handbook's scope and stopping points, and obtain independent advice where required. The pack is not project-specific advice or independent sign-off.
Tips that raise your odds of success
Questions I get asked often
This review is the selling side of the tender moment; the buying side, levelling the tenders you receive, is Tender Levelling & Award Recommendation. And when the tender wins and a contract lands, Contract Review & Amendment Schedule reads the terms before you sign them.