A Full-Proof Technique for Landing more Construction Jobs

When it comes to contractor job bidding, one of the biggest questions we hear from our clients is "How do I win more bids?" Whether you're one of the 30.9% of contractors that don't bid on projects that use BIM or if you just have concerns about whether it's time to bid on bigger projects, the simplest answer is that the biggest secret to winning more bids is to bid more projects in the first place. But how do you manage that without having to hire more people to take care of the task? Here's our take on how to win more bids by bidding on more projects, without spending all of your time doing so.

The #1 Secret to Winning More Bids in Contractor Job Bidding

If you know that your company will win a particular percentage of the bids that you make, you also know that the most reliable way to increase the number of projects you have to work is by increasing the volume of projects you bid. Simple enough, right? But bidding on more projects can be problematic in and of itself. If you spend all of your time bidding projects, are you making the most efficient use of your time, or should you be spending more time managing your jobsites and doing what you do best--running your company? 

To make the contractor job bidding process easier, you could make the entire process more efficient and economical. Some companies do this by hiring more cost estimators, but that in and of itself can simply lead to more expenses that need to be made up by winning even more projects, which then require more bids. This is a vicious cycle, especially during times when the industry is booming. During these times, good cost estimators can ask for a much higher income, impacting your bottom line, while the temptation to hire poor or inexperienced cost estimators can actually end up costing you more money when mistakes are made in the process. You'll also have to bear the cost of their benefits, training, and similar expenses, even when there aren't a lot of jobs to bid on.

Some companies have turned to computerized cost estimating software, but this also has problems when you're working on contractor job bidding. To start, you'll need to take a lot of time to really understand how the software works, so that you can take advantage of the efficiencies of the system. However, it may take a long time to gain this level of expertise, and in the meantime, you'll have the cost of the software to bear, adding more expenses to a company that you're trying to make more profitable. In addition, the software may not catch the same errors that a human estimator may catch while looking at the same blueprints, which can cause you to lose money on a big project.

The secret to winning more jobs is simple: increase your bid volume. Quite simply, the more jobs you bid on, the more jobs you win. But how do you do that? How do you manage to bid on extra projects without these big investments that may cost you money even when you're not using them? One option that has become very popular is to use a construction cost estimating service. In this situation, the estimating service provides you with cost estimates only when you need them to, but you get a dedicated cost estimator at a fraction of the cost of an in-house estimator. An example of this was when Hunt & Collins, a Wisconsin HVAC company, hired an estimating service and went on to win a $3.7 million bid--a bid they had no time to estimate in-house. This resulted in a 620x ROI for estimating expenses. In short, by leveraging cost estimating services, you can quadruple your bid volume and speed, decrease your overhead expenses, and start winning more jobs. 

When it comes to saving our customers money on contractor job bidding, 1build's construction estimating services stand above the rest. Please feel free to contact us today to request a demo of our services or get more information on how partnering with us can give you more projects to work on without sacrificing profitability or time.