Most of my work consists of giving a client an estimate and then doing the work.
But lately for some reason I've been stuck working up bid after bid, I had one phone call Friday afternoon asking if we were bidding some job I'd never heard of, didn't get the message until Monday morning and then got a call at 11 asking if I'm bidding the same job from a different contractor, I hadn't even had a chance to return the first call. Turns out the bid needed to be in by 1pm on Monday, I didn't even have a set of plans.
Most of these are for contractors so they can submit their bid, probably will amount to nothing, maybe end up doing one out of five of them.
So I'm finishing up the last one, talking to partner about the cost to see if he thinks it's about right and he says; "oh, I forgot, I've got another one for you".
Oh wonderful then he starts telling me about this guy who owns 5 blocks in The Most Messed Up Subdivision and wants to know "where" his property is.
We have some knowledge of the place, but I'm thinking how do I bid something like that. Inwardly I'm groaning, and trying to think of a way to get someone else to do a bid on that.
Probably no chance of getting it, no doubt someone will bid it too low.
He returns to my office with a file and hands it to me. So when does this bid need to be in I ask.
Oh this isn't a bid he says, he just wants us to do it.
Funny how the worst job immediately turns into one of the best. 😀
I didn't even smack him up the side of the head for making me think it was another bid.
I have spent hours preparing bids for contractors with out ever getting anything from them except the request for another bid. Makes me wonder if they are just price testing the current surveyor they use. I've changed up my practice to bid one or two for someone new, after that If no work comes they can waste someone else's time.
Spent about 30 hours a couple of weeks ago on a proposal for a local municipalities four year on-call IDIQ survey contract. Ended up about 50 pages once we put the sample project descriptions and staff resumes in there. My firm was submitting for the survey, civil, landscape architecture, and construction inspection contracts - four separate submittal packages.
The marketing manager was four minutes late delivering it to the city.
Yea seems like an ongoing trend. I also spend a lot of time preparing bids for contractors. A handful of the contractors we have great relationships with and If they get awarded the job we will get the surveying. I try to keep close contact with them to let me know the status of these projects we bid.
ChevisK, post: 330565, member: 6717 wrote: Yea seems like an ongoing trend. I also spend a lot of time preparing bids for contractors. A handful of the contractors we have great relationships with and If they get awarded the job we will get the surveying. I try to keep close contact with them to let me know the status of these projects we bid.
Pretty much the same with me, there are guys who just use you to get costs, I've quit even responding to them when I get a request. One guy kept changing the scope and wanting endless line items, I spent days and days bidding with him, finally I told him I would do one of his bids on a TM basis.
Needless to say that was the last request from him. And I keep tract of bidding time to recover it during the job if possible.
MightyMoe, post: 330552, member: 700 wrote: ...Oh this isn't a bid he says, he just wants us to do it....
Somebody posted last week lamenting that prices of surveys weren't going up. It seems like they just did.
