We were confident with our number, but the design was still moving.
Design and construct tender pricing asks you to price a building that is not finished being designed. The documents move while you measure. The submission date does not move at all.
You price what is issued, you write down what is not, and you keep going while the set changes around you.
What we priced
Costimate delivered the full tender estimate for a 41 apartment social housing development in Shepparton, Victoria, and our client converted it. The scope we priced end to end:
- 41 social housing apartments over 4 levels on a 1,750m² site
- Full Design and Construct delivery
- Civil works and bulk earthworks
- Services connections, including the Powercor supply agreement, sewer and water PIC
- Full dwelling construction, structure to finishes
- Landscaping and external works
- Preliminaries, trade breakdown and value management options
A genuinely tricky bid
The design was still moving under us. Building surveyor comments landed in a tender addendum. The fire engineering report was yet to be issued. Elevations were back with the town planner. A Housing Design Brief took precedence.
Outside the building line there was more of it. Street closures. Council footpath reinstatements. A design that left the estimator’s imagination churning.
Every one of those is a change to documents we had already started pricing. An addendum lands mid measure. A report yet to be issued is a scope carried on assumption. A brief that takes precedence can quietly overrule what is drawn.
Pricing just enough risk
The real tricky part is pricing in enough risk. Just enough.
If you overdo it, you will look like a fool.
Too little and you carry the gap yourself. Too much and you are not in the conversation at all. The balance is judgement, and judgement comes from having been wrong before.
It is also why the number and the notes go in together. Risk you have priced is only defensible when the assumption behind it is written down beside it, on the clarifications sheet.
The post tender weeks matter as much as the submission
Which is why the post tender weeks mattered just as much as the submission. Interviews, queries, VM rounds. We played a part from start to the handshakes.
We stayed on through post tender interviews, query responses, VM rounds and clarifications until the contract was awarded.
Plenty of estimating work stops the day the price goes in. That is the part we do differently, because the questions asked in those weeks are far easier to answer when the people answering did the measure.
Proud of the team, and grateful to a client who let us stay involved right through to signing rather than shaking hands at handover.
41 more homes in regional Victoria.