Over the last year we must of paid our Quantity Surveyor over £3500 in tendering/pricing fees for which we havent received one job. We are in construction - groundworks to dpc level.
Now one tender was with a local housing association which was £2,500 in fees as it was an excellent job however we didnt win the work even though our price was within the ball park yet the winner was £40k less but that was down to the fact that they were also the manufacturer and obviously not pricing for risk. To top it off the project was later shelved!!!
Just did one price last week to be told that the guy who was managing it was on holiday and the contract got awarded before our figure was submitted (again naughty).
There are endless small jobs we are using him for as we just dont have the time and cant carry risks which he can weed out and give omissions for. His service is first class and his figures are good.
We cant carry on paying bidding or pricing jobs as lets face it a decent project you could say the profit has already gone in the QS fees over the last year.
Some jobs when you get feedback are farcical obv been priced up with no contingency or profit so no wonder we dont get some of them.
I now refuse to forward subcontract tendering as again have done many of these to hear nothing (obv main contract didnt win works) but as a small business we just cant do these.
What with our boys days rate, our overheads etc the price has to be good and doing it for nothing on the risk you may win more work is a mugs game as nothing is guaranteed.
There are jobs that also never hear from again and wonder if they were using us as to obtain a ball park figure to approach other local contractors.
I am trying to win work and cutting out the smaller (too small profit) job on domestic properties as these just dont pay but now aiming for small commercial jobs but this is just flying back into my face. I have been working so hard to obtain certification like Considerate Contractors, Trustmark getting the boys all tickets and have now dropped our quality management system as the auditing was getting too expensive and it wasn't getting us anywork. In reality these are points scoring certificates but you cant tender without them.
What am I doing wrong?