You don't know your win rate
Win rate is bids won over bids sent. Track every bid.
Most owners have a feeling about how often they win, usually based on the last few bids. That feeling is off in both directions, because the wins get remembered and the losses that went unanswered don't. Without the number, you can't tell if your price is too high, if you're bidding the wrong GCs, or if the work is just hard to win. It also hides the cost of estimating, since every lost bid took hours from someone who could have been doing something else. A win rate tells you how many bids it takes to fill the schedule, and that's the number you plan around.
Three moves, in order
What CFOS does about it
CFOS has a bid pipeline that holds each bid with its value, bid date, chance of winning, and the lost bids. A won bid becomes a job with its contract value, so the bid list and the job list are the same record and not two spreadsheets. Estimates import as the job budget by cost code. A leads form on your own website feeds the pipeline, so inquiries from the site go into the same list as the bids you send yourself.
Who owns this: Owner or estimator.
At $3M, you might send forty bids a year. If you don't know how many you won, you can't say whether you need more bids or better ones. That's the first number to write down.
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Step 04: Estimating system
The estimate maps one to one onto the job cost codes, so variance means something the day it appears.
Other problems step 04 solves
Other things that go wrong
What owners ask
Subcontractor bid win rate?
Win rate is bids won over bids sent. Track every bid. Most owners have a feeling about how often they win, usually based on the last few bids. That feeling is off in both directions, because the wins get remembered and the losses that went unanswered don't. Without the number, you can't tell if your price is too high, if you're bidding the wrong GCs, or if the work is just hard to win. It also hides the cost of estimating, since every lost bid took hours from someone who could have been doing something else. A win rate tells you how many bids it takes to fill the schedule, and that's the number you plan around.
Which part of the system fixes this?
The step is number 04, estimating system. The estimate maps one to one onto the job cost codes, so variance means something the day it appears. It's drawn from chapter 4 of CONTROL: C.F.O.S. Construction Financial Operating System.
Is this normal for my trade?
Across the 48 trades that publish a figure, net profit at $1M to $5M averages 7% before taxes. If you're well under that and this page describes your month, the two are usually the same story. The published average tells you where the pack is, and your own job costing tells you where you are, which is the number that pays payroll.
Where do I start?
Open your sent email folder and list every bid you sent in the last twelve months with the GC, the amount, and whether you won, lost, or never heard back.
What do I count as a bid for a win rate?
Count any priced proposal that went to a GC or owner with the intent to win the work. Leave out budget numbers you gave away with no real chance of a contract. Whatever rule you pick, keep it the same every year so the numbers compare.
What if the GC never tells me the result?
Mark it as no answer after a follow up or two, and count it as a loss in the rate. You can also track no answer separately. A GC who never answers is telling you something about how worth it the next bid is.
Can I fix this without touching anything else?
You can try, and it doesn't hold. Step 04 depends on step 01, job cost structure and step 03, overhead calculation. Install it ahead of those and it produces numbers the field won't trust, which is worse than the problem you started with.
Wrote CONTROL, the 8 step system behind these figures. More about the author.