More RFQs than your team can price

24 June 20266 min read

Here is a number most contractors never calculate: the value of the bids you did not submit. An estimator can price maybe one serious fit-out proposal per week. In a good month, six or eight RFQs arrive. The gap between those two numbers is a pipeline that quietly leaks every month, and it never shows up in any report.

FIG 1 / THE CAPACITY GAPDOXAMIND

RFQS RECEIVEDBIDS SUBMITTED

APR

MAY

JUN

A typical quarter for a small contractor: RFQs received versus proposals actually submitted. The gap is invisible revenue loss.

Why "work harder" fails

The default answer is late nights. The estimator prices two bids that week instead of one, both at 70 percent quality. Now you have doubled your submissions and halved your hit rate, and your best technical person is burning out on document formatting. More effort inside the same process produces worse bids, not more wins.

Step 1: triage in 15 minutes, not never

Most teams triage by default: whatever arrived when someone was free gets priced. Decide instead within one day of any RFQ arriving, using three questions:

Can we actually deliver this scope and programme?
Do we have any relationship or angle, or are we column fodder?
Is the project type one we win, or one we only quote?

Kill the losers on day one, politely and in writing. A fast, honest decline keeps the relationship alive for the next tender. A bid you never send does not.

Step 2: separate pricing from production

Pricing needs your estimator. Production, meaning the document itself, the narrative, the compliance matrix, the programme chart, the formatting, does not. In most small teams the estimator does both, so a 4-hour pricing job occupies 2 days. Split the two and your scarcest person only does the work only they can do.

FIG 2 / WHERE THE ESTIMATOR'S WEEK GOESDOXAMIND

PRICING + SUPPLIER QUOTES5h

WRITING + NARRATIVE4h

FORMATTING + ASSEMBLY3h

COMPLIANCE + ADMIN2h

Hours per proposal for a typical estimator doing everything alone. Only the accented block actually requires them.

Step 3: template the 60 percent that repeats

Company profile, HSE approach, quality system, insurances, organisation chart: this content changes twice a year, yet many teams rebuild it per bid. Maintain it once, centrally, and let each new proposal start at 60 percent done. The remaining 40 percent, the project-specific part, is where wins come from, so that is where the hours should go.

The result

Triage kills the bids you were going to lose anyway. Splitting pricing from production roughly doubles how many serious bids one estimator can support. Templating cuts the cost of each. Together they turn "we missed three tenders this month" into a pipeline you actually control.

The production half is what DoxaMind does: send us the RFQ, and the document side comes back done, structured, and ready for your numbers. If your team prices well but drowns in production, join the waitlist.