The National Building Specification (NBS) section for tender documents infuriates estimators. It is often the least-professionally produced part of the whole tender package, while arguably being one of the most important.
For instance, a set of standardised, non-specific preamble clauses is provided, leaving the estimator to decide which clauses are actually needed for a particular scheme. This is not always clear. Often clause numbers are quoted in the NBS, but do not appear in the body of the specification documents. More often, the specification will lack a job reference on each page; neither will NBS category references be quoted on each page. The biggest problem arises when you drop a document and pages become mixed up. As they are not numbered there is no way of knowing their correct sequence.
Other irritants include: out-of-date catalogue and British Standard references; and numerous blank spaces, where no effort has been made to complete NBS clause 'variables'.
Tender amendments
Amendments to tenders issued during the final few days of a tender period are almost impossible to price within the time available. The only remedy for this is a more thorough study of a set of tender documents by estimators when they are received, thereby allowing queries to be raised in time.
A four-week tender period is generally preferred; longer is needed where a contractor-designed element is incorporated. However, the norm is more like one or two weeks. No wonder then that with the extra risk of not being able to confirm availability and price from suppliers, tenders are higher than necessary.
Calling in priced documents
Tenderers spend a lot of time and money completing a priced document (of whatever sort), and if their tender is the not the lowest there must be a very good reason for calling in their documents.
Too often, clients or QSs routinely call in the lowest two or three tenders, apparently to compare documents and individual pricing. But in fact, on schemes with a large element of design and programme input, there is concern that some tenderers' documents are called in so that the best ideas may be 'cherry-picked' by the design team.
Sometimes the tender period is very short because a scheme is urgent. Why, in such cases, is the tender held open for acceptance for 13 weeks?
Short contract periods are another common cause of estimator frustration. Account needs to be taken, when assessing contract periods, of drying-out times for screed and of delivery times for steelwork and specialist fittings.
When estimators complain that contract periods are impossible, the response is that the contractor will simply add x-weeks of liquidated and ascertained damages to his tender (which will increase the cost to the client and make the project late). One solution to this is to get an alternative tender, reflecting a tenderer's own preferred contract period rather than the stipulated period.
One question raised in the recent meeting with the CIOB estimators' division in the north-east was: how much influence do QSs have in selecting contractors for inclusion in a list of tenderers? In Rider Hunt's experience, the QS has an equal input into this task as a member of the design team, and the QS's opinions are valued.
Increasingly, contractors employ consultant QSs to prepare quantities for their own tender, paying their fees by agreement. A more economical solution that is increasingly used is for all or most of the tenderers to use the same QS, all adding the QS fee into their tender. The successful contractor then pays the QS fee on award of the contract. The client still ends up paying for quantities to be prepared somewhere along the line, but multiple, abortive costs are substantially reduced.
As an alternative, each tenderer could be asked to pay a stated contribution to a 'quantities fee' to obtain a full set of QS prepared quantities for a scheme. The client should pay this contribution in full if he aborts a scheme before commencement (possibly also contributing a further guaranteed abortive estimating fee to each contractor).
This would demonstrate a client's conviction that the scheme is going to proceed. Often it is apparent that the scheme is not always 'definite' and both consultants and contractors incur considerable costs.
Contractors' design
Many schemes that purport to have a contractor-designed element contain a large element of pre-design, and could often be termed adopt-and-take-the-risk-for-others’-design schemes. Why should the contractor be forced to enter into collateral warranties for work which, to all intents and purposes, someone else has designed?
Very often schemes of £750 000 or more are issued on a plan and specification basis, in contravention of NJCC recommendations - albeit as a result of very low levels of professional fees being offered to design teams.
Incorrect budgets are another source of waste and frustration. Clients do not always know exactly what they want, and inadequate briefing, specification, and design at the various stages of the budget monitoring are the prime reasons put forward for this. But it does not mitigate in any way the high levels of abortive costs incurred by all parties when a scheme is abandoned or, at best, substantially altered to accord with a deficient budget.
Should lowest tenders win?
Should the lowest tender always be chosen? There are many possible ways of answering this question, revolving around presentation and content of tenders with design input and scope for identification of obvious errors.
One foreign practice is to select the best average tender. In this process, the highest and lowest tenders are discounted, and the tender closest to the mean of the remaining tenders is picked. This should ensure that the correct cost of doing the work is paid; the contractor would be eager to ensure that a good service is given, and the client and design team would know that they were working with a contractor that was not solely interested in recovering a shortfall in its tender price.
Last-minute sub-contract prices
One of contractors' and consultants' worst problems is getting mechanical and electrical sub-tenders in time for inclusion in the overall tender. Sometimes contractors are reduced to parking outside a client's offices with a mobile 'phone just before the tender deadline, waiting for a last-minute engineering cost to arrive. This leaves no time to consider any clarifications, exclusions or onerous clauses that the sub-contractor may append to figures. Frequently, these clarifications do not arrive in writing on the estimator's desk until after the tender deadline.
Sub-contractors admit that they withhold figures until the last minute to improve their bargaining stance and avoid being 'played-off' against other sub-tenderers prior to the tender return date. Most estimators would prefer mechanical and electrical sub-contract tenders to be returned in adequate time for scrutiny by the consulting services engineer or quantity surveyor.
A requirement for tenderers to name their preferred services sub-contractors, together with installation prices, is often included in tender documents, though not often enforced. Inclusion of nominated sub-contractors would go a long way towards alleviating most of these problems, and the sub-contractors would know that their first price would have to be their best and final one.
The current complexity and unwieldiness of most of the standard nomination paperwork is off-putting for many consultants. In addition, it has been known for contractors to use the extensions of time clause available in respect of nominated sub-contracts for their own benefit, even when it is not totally legitimate.
Often services consultants will insist that the tenderer provides priced bills of quantities, even though the enquiry was issued on a plan and specification basis. Who, then, is liable for errors in the priced bills of quantities produced under these circumstances? If a large item is included twice instead of once, can it be deducted? Conversely, can a missed item then be added to the final account? This should surely be part and parcel of the contractor's risk when plan and specification enquiries are priced.
General complaints
Different consultants frequently send out documents to the tendering contractors and sub-contractors. On the face of it, this can be an efficient way of speeding up the process. However, inconsistencies occasionally occur between the 'same' documents issued to the different parties, including differing drawing numbers and provisional sums. An incomplete tender, with items "'to be issued later"', delays the issue of sub-contract enquiries.
Other grumbles range from complex issues like biased or unnecessary contract amendments and liquidated damages figures (which are considered by contractors to be penalties) to documents bound in plastic or wire rings that are difficult to photocopy.
In all this it is easy to forget that the most important member of the project team is the client, who could be addressed with much more consideration.
Source
Construction Manager
