No, I’m not talking about do you go dutch on sharing the cost of a meal at a restaurant.
I’m talking about the practice of bill sharing or sharing the cost of producing bills of quantities on a project between the tendering parties.
Is it something you encourage, discourage, think should be made more widespread or you simply won’t entertain it at all?
It’s all got a bit more complicated of late because of the Office of Fair Trading Investigation into price fixing and bid rigging. This recent report from them whilst it’s a bit lengthy is well worth a read.
A lot of people are fearful that bill sharing can be viewed as collusive tendering. I ask you where is the logic in that? If all the tenderers on a project put in a price based on the same set of quantities, surely that’s a good thing? After it all it then comes down to the contractors skills in delivering the project in the most cost effective way. Be it a quicker programme, more inventive use of construction technology and construction techniques or a smarter supply chain.
But isn’t this all a bit old fashioned?
After all this is the role the traditional QS carried out years ago. Except the big QS companies don’t want to do that anymore. But they are not QS companies anymore, they are International Construction Consultants, Global Construction Consultants, Asset Management Consultants………. Don’t get me wrong I’m not knocking them it’s all good business for us. What it does mean is a lot of duplication of effort on any given tender by a lot of people though.
Surely that’s wasteful?
On a different theme a lecturer I met recently from the College of Estate Management, who has a working knowledge of the market in Ireland, tells me that with the Government form of contract GCCC every contract has to be let with firm bills of quantities for, not only the building and civil engineering works, but the M & E too; with no Provisional or P.C sums being allowed either. Now there’s a novelty! Will that catch on here? Not likely.
Anyway to round things off from our perspective we find a lot of contractors work exclusively with us as they believe it gives them a competitive edge making use of our specialist skills and knowledge of working in this environment. And the standard of information issued for tender these days that we all have to deal with, is well……..you fill in the blanks!
So is bill sharing for the future or a thing of the past?
Let me know what you think I’d be interested to hear from you.
Derek Mynott's Blog 