Procurement through Achilles/Construction-on-line etc

[bacon]

ANyone use this for very small companies.

Construction-on-line is only £70 while Achilles if over £2000!

Is this the only way forward in wining work? I'm also working on gaining our ISO 9001 QMS system.

I really hope I'm doing the right thing. I would subsitute this overhead against our advertising which hasnt worked at all this year.

I assume you mean Constructionline. This won't win you any work, but many main contractors will expect you to be registered (assuming you are a subcontractor). Another pre-qual accreditation that may be worthwhile (depending on what you do and who you want to do it for) is CHAS.

If it's leads you need, try Glenigan's pay-as-you go service. Low value public sector work tends to come through frameworks which are notified in Tenders Electronic Daily, but usually echoed in the back pages of Construction News.

Don't pay £2,000 for anything.

We are specialist groundworks and planthire. We have done some work for a large utility company in the past - but have some work for us but unwilling to give it to us until we are are on Achilles.

For PPQs/tenders more points are gained from being registered with Constructionline/ISO. And really we need to be above our competition.

Thanks for that link on Glenigans.

Looked at the Glenigans site, signed up for a similar thing a few years ago but there isnt much on there that you cant gain from the local council portal. Paying £1.50 to view a planning application which is available on-line foc.

This sort of lead thing is great if you can afford for someone to sell your company through endless site visits. When hubby is working he cant spare anytime to coldcall. In my experience - having worked in offices (some construction based) letter drops and introductions are a waste of time and effort. Any other paperchasing excercise isnt what we need. We need the main site contractor to be actively searching for local businesses - how does he do that? recommendation, website???

We've done "met the buyer" but havent heard anything yet on these jobs but the projects arnt planned till next year.

chicken and egg! We wait for the phone to ring as its pysically impossible to be active and look for work. We get lots of private small work but this isnt really paying for the amount of kit sat in the yard.

Any other recommendations much appreciated.

Have you got a website?
SEO? to improve your google rankings?
What about email shots?
You say you use the council portals - do you use Compete For, bluelight, supply2gov etc?
Glenigan and ABI will offer you a months free trial and then later you can fob them off after you have copied and pasted loads of leads and contact details to your own files Just be prepared to be on the phone hitting it hard for that free month.

Groundworks is tricky. Main contractors tend to stick with who they know will turn up on site at 2 weeks notice, get the work done on programme and stick to an all risks lump sum. You need to build that reputation with a few solid main contractors (not many of those around in these times). Winning the first job is about luck and timing - you need to be talking to the buyer (letters are useless, you need a phone call) in the week he is having trouble getting quotes from his usual subbies (most of which he never gives any work to so they have stopped quoting) to meet a deadline. If you call randomly, 99% of the calls will be wasted. If you use some market intelligence, only 90% of the calls will be wasted. Make 10 targeted calls a week, and that's a tender a week (make any more than that and you will be calling the same people every week and they will stop talking to you). Win one in ten and that's 5 jobs a year for new clients: turn them into repeat clients and you will be competing with the regional big boys, and then the game becomes slightly different.

On another tack, follow up with the consultants on jobs you have done well and try to get them to recommend you.

Don't know the utilities market at all so I can't help you there.

Yes you are right Mranchovy. We defo need to be more pro-active. Most of our work is through referrels but small domestic jobs are not paying for the expensive kit.

When we quote for work we are not the cheapest by far but we do the job right in the time specified using qualified men and fully insured. However, the customer just wants to employ the cheapest. We do have a couple of fab builders who love us however we need many more!!!

My problem is stuck with a farm, young family, house and business all in one and I struggle to get much done. As I have said in a previous thread, my childcare fees are killing me and cant justify increasing my drawings as the business isnt doing that well.

sowhatshallido yes we have a good website which is temporary until all the professional photos are taken. Once again time is the problem as hubby can get in very late and is too knackered to spend time going through wording. We do pick up the occassional job but the job is a one off domestic which isnt enough. Def not going to spend on rankings/clicks. Because there are a lot of unemployed groundworks/plant operatives we get enough calls/e-mails requesting work and we dont want to be spending for that. On the otherhand I did spend a few days going on as many free sites as poss and adding our details. I have also joined up on mybuilder and rated people.

The govenment portal for small tenders doesnt seem to be working either!

How much cash is sitting in the company bank account?

How much cash is locked up in under-utilised plant?

If the answer to either of those is more than £100, that'll pay for a week's shopping.

It sounds like you could do with a business mentor: are you in touch with your local Business Link?

I mean the business bank account of course, if it were a Limited Company you couldn't just raid the bank account