I regularly review tenders and continue to see a varying price/quality ratio. Just recently I was involved in a substantial tender for an extension to a well-respected fee-paying school in Belfast. A firm of building surveying and project management consultants were acting as Managing Agent on behalf of their client. I was disappointed to see that the criteria for tender evaluation was simply lowest price. I queried this with them and asked why they decided to allocate zero points to quality. Unsurprisingly I got a pause followed by a wobbly answer, something along the lines that it was due to 'time pressure'. Ultimately it costs less time for the Managing Agent to evaluate a tender which is simply down to price, so unless there is an incentive to do so, I cannot see why the default position will change from lowest price. Unfortunately, that is unsustainable for progressive contractors that need to make a fair and reasonable profit to re-invest in their staff and apprenticeships to safeguard the future of the construction industry. Hopefully things will change in the private sector, but I doubt it.
Photograph by Brett Jordan.
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