Keep Calm and Estimate On
“It’s a lot like dating rules. Never get emotionally committed to a job until you have the contract. Until that point, it’s a game to be won, and you make the rules. Someone else is just keeping score.” -Jan Beran Beck Technology Senior Implementation Specialist and former estimator
You can’t win them all.
We all know this but sometimes bouncing back after a big bid loss is easier said than done. What can you do to keep calm and estimate on? We talked to experienced estimators to learn what they’ve done in the past to move forward with a winning positive attitude.
Let off some steam together. 
John Reich, customer success leader at Beck Technology, and host of the Precon Geeks preconstruction podcast was an estimator for 11 years before joining Beck Technology. He says that after pursuing a big project, even before knowing the outcome, the precon team would go out for a happy hour or a meal together to reward the team for their efforts. He says to keep spirits up, precon leaders should recognize that their team did the best they could. “There are always other jobs,” he says.
He likens it to baseball: “If you hit 300, that’s a good mark. That means you’re missing 70% of the time. That’s probably similar to what we do in construction. If you get 30% of your wins, that’s a decent mark.”
You’re not losing the job; you’re learning from the job.
Debrief as a team and look at where you went wrong, what went right, and analyze how you could have won the project. (Insider tip and shameless plug: DESTINI Estimator construction estimating software allows you to compare estimates so you can easily see where similar projects were won or lost.)
Grant Stucker, strategic account executive at Beck Technology and former preconstruction manager says, “Don’t dwell on it, there will be more projects in the future, learn from it, then put it behind you and focus on the next one. Also, understand what was done well that may have set you apart from the competition and celebrate that.”
Jan says, “The struggle more comes when you lose many projects in a row with little data to learn from. But maintaining the ‘a job is a job’ attitude is important. Having a program that captures and stores all your cost history data like DESTINI Estimator estimating software helps with that post bid analysis and prevents losing many projects in row because you can’t track or benchmark your data.”
Ask and hopefully you shall receive.
Reach out to your contacts and ask them why you lost the bid.
Construction is based around relationships. Your point of contact should give you general feedback like if there was a lower number, faster schedule, or if a contractor had more experience with that particular project.
John says, “I’ve lost jobs before where they told us they had five major projects in the last five years, and you’ve won four of them and we wanted to spread the wealth… Owners don’t want to get the reputation that they’re in bed with one contractor.” Spreading jobs out keeps the market healthy and everyone benefits.
Ted Solomon, experienced in heavy civil construction in New York and Beck Tech implementation specialist says, “We lost a $2.1 billion bid. After losing that bid, we were able to pursue work more aggressively but with larger margins because we knew that the winner of that project was at their bonding capacity and was unable to bid on future projects.”
Remember: No Losing, Only Learning. The feedback you receive informs future go/no-go decisions.
What do I do if I don’t receive feedback?
Jan says, “Depending on the bid format, sometimes you can find out who the subs were on the other bid. You can create a post-bid comparison estimate based on what you do know to see if there were any controllables that you could have tightened up.
Ask:
- What was the awarded bid amount? And who? (If they don’t answer, ask them to approximate how much higher your bid was.)
- Is the award based on price alone, or are there other factors we can improve upon?
Losses Can Be Wins
Do you really want to win every job?
John says, “Some of the best wins we had as a company were jobs we ended up not getting. There were multiple jobs we pursued because we felt it was a good opportunity, and we missed out on getting it. Then two years later, you hear how the job is going and it’s a disaster.”
Sometimes those losses are you dodging a bullet or opening yourself up to a better, bigger opportunity.
We’ll leave you with this wisdom: “Learning how to put a good solid bid together for a project, that’s always a good experience rather you get the job or not.”
For more stories about how to deal with estimating losses, listen to the episode of Precon Geeks, Coping with a Losing a Bid.