Tenders: packages and quotes
Out to the trades, and the prices lined up when they come back
Why this one matters
Getting trade prices in is mostly admin, and it is admin that costs money. Five emails to five framers, each with a slightly different attachment, then a fortnight of wondering who has replied and whether the one cheap price is cheap because they have missed something.
Putting the same package to all of them and lining the answers up side by side is not a clever feature. It is just the difference between comparing prices and hoping.
What you will see
- One package of scope and drawings sent to several trades at once
- Who has opened it, who has priced it and who has gone quiet
- The prices that came back, side by side against the same scope
- The chosen quote going into the estimate rather than being retyped
What was said
The narration, word for word, for anyone who would rather read it than watch it — or who is on a train.
A tender is one package of work, sent to several subcontractors to price. The bar across the top shows where it's up to.
Choose the items in the package: one at a time, or a whole cost code. Their quantities come from your estimate.
If the estimate changes after you've built the package, the line is flagged. Match brings it back in line.
Invite the subcontractors. Three or four for most trades is enough to know the price is fair.
The Email tab is the invitation itself. Fields like the tender name and the project fill themselves in for each subcontractor. Keep your standard wording as a template, and every tender goes out the same way.
Attach the drawings and specifications they need to price from on the Files tab. And tick Attach the item list P-D-F, so every subcontractor gets the same list of quantities with the invitation.
Tick Ready to send, then send. Nothing goes out until it's ticked, so a half-built package never goes by mistake.
Each line shows whether the invitation went, and whether they've quoted. If an email bounces, it says so.
When quotes come back, Compare puts them side by side, against your budget.
Look closely. This quote is cheaper only because it priced the paths at nothing. The other left them unpriced. The cheapest isn't always the cheapest.
Select the winning quote, and its prices go into your estimate.
Doing it, rather than watching it
This page is the tour. When you are in SmarteBuild with a job open and need the detail — every option, every exception, the things the video had no time for — the help centre has the full article.
Sending and tracking a tender — the full reference
Read about it instead: Tenders · Quotes Received · Suppliers
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