April 16, 2008

Contracts

Bid selectively, consultant tells Canadian Mechanical Contracting conference delegates

PATRICIA WILLIAMS

staff writer

Florida consultant Kevin Dougherty has some words of advice for contractors when it comes to bidding projects: Sometimes, it makes sense to just say no.

“Generally speaking, don’t bid jobs you have no chance of getting,” he told a recent Toronto conference sponsored by the Canadian Mechanical Contracting Education Foundation.

Dougherty, vice-president of Kevlar Consulting of Sarasota, Fla., said that in some cases, estimators submit bids “because the boss told them to.” The rationale is that the firm doesn’t want to offend customers.

“These are really courtesy bids,” Dougherty said. “It’s really not a bid; it’s marketing. You might just as well take someone out golfing.”

He made the comments during a workshop on advanced estimating.

Dougherty, whose firm provides consulting services to the construction industry and whose clients include both family-owned businesses and conglomerates, said in an interview later that contractors often “take the easy route. “Bidding is much easier than selling and finding work,” he said. Contractors “are order-takers; we wait for people to call. We’re afraid of saying no. We’re afraid we may never get a chance to bid another job with that customer.

“Trust me, if they think we can save them money, they’ll call us.”

Dougherty said contractors’ time would be better spent cultivating new customers or “ensuring the jobs we already have are more profitable” than pursuing work they have no chance of winning.

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