You’ve got to know when hold ’em, know when to fold ’em….—”The Gambler” by Don Schlitz
A colleague recently told me a fish story, a sad tale of having to cut bait. It seems he had just finished submitting a particularly arduous proposal that ran a bit longer than his projected window. Eager to keep his bid volume up, he hurriedly downloaded the next likely project on the bid calendar and began to skim. It was a sizeable job for a favored general contractor and the bid date was only two days off, but he thought he could squeeze it in if he worked some long hours and hurried. Foregoing his usual pre-takeoff practice of setting up the job in advance, he plunged headlong into spinning off numerous costly exterior wall assemblies. He rarely took shortcuts, but this time was different. A late start left him with a time deficit that had to be reckoned with.
By the end of the first day, the frustration of mounting ambiguities and latent “gotchas” steered him back to the bid folder for a closer gander at the background info. Much to his chagrin, there were seven addenda that looked like they would probably undo at least half of his work. Worse still, he now noticed that there were bid invitations from no less than six GCs, some of whom were known low-ball vultures. At that point, he wisely chalked up his wasted time to a lesson well-learned and begged off the bid in favor of a more promising prospect.
You may think this little anecdote better illustrates a happier time when work was so plentiful we could “pick and choose” the least risky and most likely offerings. But the principles of best selection apply every bit as constructively in these times of rebound as they did back in the days of prosperity. And while different outfits delegate the responsibility for developing the bid calendar differently—from executives, to department heads, to the estimators themselves—the negative factors that play into the rejection of a job apply across the board.
Too many cooks.Hard-bid jobs where the prospective GCs number more than four give pause to most discriminating estimators. It is widely understood that each GC has his own two or three favorite subs that bid all of his work. Simple math yields the inevitable conclusion that the odds of landing an award diminish with the addition of each GC to the roster. Then, too, the likelihood that a toxic low-ball GC is among the field increases with the size of the list. And while some drywall subs may feel more or less obligated to provide pricing to a friendly GC in this situation, the tale of a sudden outbreak of the flu in the estimating department might be a better alternative to wasting time with a job that’s a confirmed loser from the get-go.
Partly cloudy skies.Nearly every set of bid docs that’s issued these days is plagued with some degree of ambiguity—that’s a given. But when a plan set that is conceptual at best is being represented as a bid rather than a budget, the proverbial red flags go up. Symptoms of an underdeveloped project include blank section and detail links, and extensive addenda that basically reissue the entire plan set in piecemeal. Unless they are helping a single GC with a design-build project, wise gatekeepers elect to wait these nebulous issues out, as they frequently go out to re-bid at a later date with a clearer set of developed drawings.
Crouching tigers.The last installment of this column noted numerous examples of potential “gotchas” that frequently appear on plans, but the item merits passing mention here as well. Effective bid-calendar sentinels recognize that it takes only one concealed detail or obscure note to lose a time-consuming job to a competitor with tired eyes. And while a slew of pernicious gotchas might not be sufficient grounds for outright rejection, it may be one contributing factor toward disqualifying a project.
A bridge too far.Many drywall subs refuse to bid any out-of-town work, period. Others make some exceptions, but for all bid-log decision-makers, distance is an issue. There are just too many unknown and unknowable factors—unpredictable market conditions, skill level of the local labor pool, material availability, just to name a few. Then there are more wild-card cost issues involved with estimating distant work that a competitor may or may not calculate.
Time is of the essence.Determining the amount of time needed to develop an accurate bid effectively has been hampered by ever-shrinking windows of opportunity. The temptation to stretch the resources of the estimating department thin to cover all possible prospects has led to some serious hand-wringing of late. Still there are instances in which responsible gatekeepers will recognize that two days is probably not enough time for one estimator to turn out multiple scopes on a $3-million bid. Sometimes it’s just wise to take a pass.
These are just a few issues that estimating gatekeepers consider when selecting projects to bid. Other factors might include size of the project, start date, manpower levels and owner solvency. In any case, during this current climate of tenuous recovery, commercial drywall firms are trying to gain the most amount of work with the least amount of human resource. Given this dynamic, a policy of carefully choosing the most likely prospects for success over a “shotgun approach” just makes sense. In other words, decision-makers need to know when to walk away.
Just ask Kenny Rogers.
Vince Bailey is an estimator at E&K of Phoenix.
