Tips To Help You Win Your Construction Bids
Projects in the construction sector are generally acquired through the process of bidding and so your bid should be prepared in a way as to not only win the project but also to get you a good profit out of it. Therefore, expertise along with the right mix of software and digital tools can facilitate the process to help you win the most coveted projects and even the smallest error can lead to missing out on a highly desired project. You can, however, hack the bidding process with some critical components of a strategy to elevate your chances of getting more bids.
1.Lead Generation Services
Good lead generation services for example Building Connected and the Blue Book aid in connecting contractors with sub-contractors and with developers, industrial equipment supplier and architects looking for people to bid their job so using lead generation services is a great way to get wind of active projects right now so you can start bidding them.
2.Don’t Bid on Everything
Contrary to popular belief, bidding on every project won’t get you more wins and while it can be a numbers game, the goal shouldn’t be to bid on projects just for the sake of it but bidding on your niche and specialization and even use the work you’ve done to emphasize your skills in that area.
This helps you craft pitches that you’re best suited for leading to more wins. Ideally, you want a high bid-hit ratio but that does rely on the quality of the bid over the quantity. Also, crafting bids for contracts fitting your niche will highlight the jobs you’ve done and show how your experience and expertise is relevant in moving the project along.
3.Review Profitability
If your profit margins aren’t as expected, it could be either because of imprecise estimate, or the productivity issues on jobsite causing job costs to be higher. Regardless, you should work to resolve the problems to get profit margins where they need to be.
4.Up your Game with Digital tools
The precision of your estimate, transparency and connections are of utmost importance and there are multiple digital tools that bring these elements together on a single platform to help with the quick management of your work. Apart from the storage of data, such tools tender zero errors and even offer instantaneous updates relevant to the ongoing project. Softwares like Bidclerk, isqft, bidplanroom, Procore, smartbid etc. aid you in the management of the database.
5.Track Your Bid-Hit Ratio
The last tactic to use to win more bids is to continuously audit your bid-hit ratio. For success, a good reference point to strive for is an average bid-hit ratio of about 4-to-1 for private projects and 10-to-1 for public projects. Keeping a track of your numbers will allow you to see where you line up compared to the industry standard.If you’re higher, that’s great! As it means you’re landing more gigs per bid than the industry average, but doesn’t mean that you’re actually landing more projects.
If you’re bid-hit ratio is low while also bidding on a low number of projects, that’s the worst outcome. At that point, it’s time to carefully audit your bids to figure out where you’re going wrong to better understand what tactics and strategies you can use to raise that bid-hit ratio.
