A bid gets decided before it gets built. Seven criteria scored from 0 to 5, weighting coefficients, one threshold: above it you respond, below it you pass and keep your day.
Most construction companies decide by gut feeling, reading the notice on a Friday evening. The bid goes out because it's there, not because it's good. Two days of work later, the contract goes to a competitor who'd already been working with the client for six years.
Why we respond to bids we'll never win
Three reasons come up again and again, and none of them is stupidity.
The first is the order book. When it's looking thin three months out, every bid looks like a lifeline. You respond to ten to win one, and the other nine cost you the time you should have spent calling former clients.
The second is memory. Nobody tracks how many hours a bid actually cost. The work disappears into evenings, it never shows up on any cost-accounting line, so it looks free. The same blind spot shows up with scheduling, priced out here: https://www.benit.fr/en/blog/cout-gestion-planning-artisan-calcul
The third is pride. A client invites you to bid, and you don't want to be the one who doesn't respond. It's the only reasonable argument of the three, and it's solved with a well-reasoned decline letter, not a rushed submission.
Which criteria really decide whether you respond to a bid
Seven, not fifteen. A grid you can't fill out in ten minutes will never get filled out.
| Criterion | What you're scoring | Weight |
|---|---|---|
| Relationship with the client | 0 if you don't know them, 5 if you've already delivered for them | 3 |
| Fit with your core trade | 0 if the contract forces you to subcontract half of it, 5 if it's your everyday work | 3 |
| Predictable margin on this type of contract | 0 if you're always at rock-bottom pricing, 5 if you hold your rates | 3 |
| Expected competition | 0 if the notice will draw fifteen bidders, 5 if you're one of two or three in the running | 2 |
| Fit with your schedule | 0 if the start date lands during your peak, 5 if it matches a slow period | 2 |
| Payment terms and retentions | 0 if there's a heavy retention and 60-day payment, 5 if there are deposits and monthly progress billing | 2 |
| Effort to put the bid together | 0 if it needs a full technical proposal and documents to track down, 5 if it's just a form and a price | 1 |
Score each criterion from 0 to 5, maximum total 80 points
The effort of putting the bid together is deliberately the lowest-weighted criterion. It affects your cost, not your odds of winning. It's the one that tempts you into bad bids just because they're easy. On the payment criterion, the rhythm of monthly progress billing changes everything; the method is detailed at https://www.benit.fr/en/blog/facture-situation-travaux-btp-methode-complete
The grid and its three thresholds
| Score out of 80 | Decision | What you actually do |
|---|---|---|
| 52 and above | You respond | Full submission, a properly worked technical proposal, a site visit if possible |
| 40 to 51 | Gray zone | Lightweight response: a fair price, a recycled proposal, no extra day spent |
| Below 40 | You pass | A three-line decline letter, with the reason, sent the same day |
The decline letter isn't just a courtesy. It keeps you on the invite list the following year, and it gives the client information they don't have: the deadline was too tight, the contract too broad, the payment terms unworkable. Some come back with a revised offer.
How much a bid built for nothing costs you
The math comes down to four lines: number of bids put together per year, average hours per bid, hourly cost of the person building it, win rate. The assumptions below are conservative and are only ballpark figures; run the numbers again on your own year.
| Profile | Bids per year | Hours per bid | Hourly cost | Annual cost of building bids | Cost of lost bids |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sole tradesperson | 12 | 8 | €60 | €5,760 | about €4,600 |
| 8-employee company | 40 | 10 | €55 | €22,000 | about €17,600 |
| 15-person engineering firm | 90 | 12 | €55 | €59,400 | about €47,500 |
Assuming one bid won out of five
What the grid recovers: the 30 percent least likely bids, ruled out in ten minutes instead of two days. For the 8-employee company, that's around 120 hours a year freed up for pricing jobs it can actually win. This is the same reserve of hours identified in https://www.benit.fr/en/blog/journee-type-chef-entreprise-btp
What it doesn't recover: bids lost by a 5 percent price gap, or ones where the client had already picked someone before even consulting the market. The grid sorts what comes in; it doesn't manufacture wins.
Three real cases and their verdict
Solo plumbing and heating contractor, an €18,000 plumbing contract for a town council
No relationship with the local authority, a job in his own trade, tight margins on public contracts, eight bidders expected, a September start during his boiler-season peak, 45-day payment, a full administrative file to put together. Score: 34 out of 80. He passes, and sends his decline letter noting he's available for the maintenance contract.
Finishing-trades company, 8 employees, a €180,000 partition-wall contract with a developer they've already worked for
Two projects already delivered for this developer, an exact fit with their core trade, historically solid margins, three bidders, a compatible schedule, monthly progress billing. Score: 63. They respond, and they put in the day they'd refuse to spend elsewhere.
4-person mechanical engineering firm, a framework agreement with purchase orders
Unknown client but a contract that's a perfect fit for their specialty, decent margin, heavy competition, open schedule, slow payment, a heavy technical proposal. Score: 46. Gray zone: a half-day response, a proposal recycled from a previous bid, the price set with no fancy formatting one-upmanship. The same grid logic applied to drafting tools is at https://www.benit.fr/en/blog/logiciel-redaction-cctp-checklist-decision
What gets copied into a bid, and what you never delegate
Putting a bid together splits into two halves. On one side, what gets copied: application forms, certifications, revenue figures for the last three fiscal years, similar references, quantities pulled from the DPGF (bill of quantities), the DPGF filled in line by line, a technical proposal that's 70 percent identical from one bid to the next. On the other side, what gets decided: the price, the method, the resources assigned, reading the risks in the CCTP (technical specifications).
The first half can be delegated entirely, straight from your existing files, with no software change: the principle is described at https://www.benit.fr/methode and the breakdown by construction trade at https://www.benit.fr/secteur-btp . The second half stays with the owner or the site supervisor, and needs to stay there. A price generated by a machine on an unusual job is a guaranteed disaster.
Putting the grid in place on Monday morning
- Copy the seven criteria and their weights onto a single sheet, posted near wherever the notices come in.
- Score your last twelve bids retroactively, both won and lost, and see where the threshold would have fallen: this calibration is what makes the grid credible to your team.
- Adjust the threshold if your winning bids score below 52; the grid needs to reflect your market, not the other way around.
- One person, and only one, fills out the grid within 24 hours of the notice being published.
- The decline letter goes out the day of the decision, never later.
- Every quarter, compare the average score of the bids you won against the ones you lost.
One honest limitation: if you respond to three bids a year, this grid won't do much for you. Your gut is enough, and it's probably better than seven lines on a spreadsheet. This becomes worthwhile past about twenty consultations a year, when nobody remembers anymore why you responded to last month's. What an AI collaborator takes over in that case is listed at https://www.benit.fr/agent-ia-pme
The rest is a matter of consistency, every single day, including the weeks when the phone won't stop ringing. That's what breaks first in a construction company, and it's the only part of this work that truly gets delegated.
Frequently asked questions
Should you respond when you don't know the client?
Yes, but at most one time in three, and never on a contract with heavy competition. An unknown client is best approached through a first, modest-sized job, often outside a formal tender. Cold-bidding on a large contract usually just funds someone else's bid.
How long does it take to put together a construction bid?
Between six and fourteen hours for a standard finishing-trades contract, more as soon as a detailed technical proposal is required. The administrative part accounts for roughly half of that. That half is exactly why bids get built in the evening instead of during the day.
How do you decline a bid invitation without burning the relationship?
Three lines written the same day: thank them for the invitation, give the real reason you're declining, and say what type of contract you'd still be interested in. Silence hurts you, a well-reasoned response keeps the relationship alive. Some clients call you back directly the following year.
Do you need software to run this grid?
No. A spreadsheet with the seven criteria and an automatic total is enough for years. Software becomes useful once several people are scoring and you need to compare scores over time, not before.
What win rate should you aim for on bids?
One bid won out of five is a common ballpark figure in finishing trades. Above one in three, you're probably pricing too low. Below one in eight, the problem isn't your pricing but the sorting upstream, and that's exactly what the grid fixes.
Who should fill out the grid within the company?
Whoever knows the actual margin on this type of contract, so the owner or the lead site supervisor. Turning it into a three-person meeting defeats the whole point of the tool: ten minutes, one person, one written decision.