We ask for prices without telling anyone enough to price
No specification, no access detail, no working hours, no date - so what comes back is either a guess or padded to cover what we didn't say.
What's happening?
An enquiry that says supply and fit, drawings attached gets the price it deserves. Without the specification, the access constraints, the working hours, the programme dates and the attendances, every tenderer fills the silence differently: the careful ones pad, the hungry ones guess low and plan to claim it back, and the returns can't be compared because each priced a different set of assumptions.
The enquiry pack is where buying goes right or wrong. Scope described, information listed, a pricing schedule that forces the same shape from every return, the exclusions you will and won't accept stated up front - a few hours of assembly that saves the weeks of levelling, requotes and mid-job arguments a thin enquiry buys.
The solution
Enough on the table for the prices to mean something.