Bid Day

Estimating was time consuming and very stressful. Yet I did like it. I enjoyed the “reading” of the plans and specifications and I once compared it to being a personal challenge from the architect…my job was to find all of the “work” contained in the plans and the architects job was to make the job appear to be simplicity itself. And when I missed something…the architect won. At the same time, if I were to find all of the work, then my price would be too high and our competitors would win. You had to find everything you could and then price the work to be as competitive as possible. That was where the stress was.

And bid day was terrifying. That was where all of your talents were going to be on display when you finally revealed your price to the general contractors. Worst scenario: Your price is $100,000 lower than anyone else’s price. 2nd worst scenario: Your price is $100,000 higher than anyone else’s price.

It wasn’t very ethical, but our job was also to find out, if possible, what our competitors bid amount was going to be. You did this by cultivating friends among the general contractors and they just might let you know what numbers they had heard through the grapevine.

Here is how it worked; bid time would be at 2 PM. No bids accepted after that time. Sometimes you have to give sealed bids in person, which was a logistical nightmare. But most times you were doing this all by phone and you would start by calling a “friendly contractor” about 12:30 or 1 PM, with your bid price and ask if, just perhaps, some other numbers had been heard? Usually the answer was negative but you got a promise to hear back from them. About 1:30 you would start calling all of the friendly contractors and try to determine where your $ number was in relation to others. Of course all of your competitors were doing the same thing and so finding that number was difficult. If you were lucky, you might hear that a bid had been received for $100,000. Your price was currently at $110,000. You have to make a decision. Can you do the job for less than the low number? And still make money? If the answer is yes, you have to call all of the other contractors and change your bid number to, let’s say…$95,000. And then hope that the competition doesn’t find out right away. The clock was both your enemy and your friend. You would make that price change at the last possible minute, maybe 1:58 and hope you had time to call everyone.

Excitement? You bet