We win work at prices that lose money
The tender went in under pressure and nobody had time to price it properly.
What's happening?
The deadline did the estimating. The enquiry landed while every surveyor was buried in live jobs, so the rates came off the last project, the prelims were compressed to fit the number the market was assumed to want, and the exclusions were left vague because listing them properly takes an afternoon nobody had. The tender went out because the date arrived, not because the price was ready.
The arithmetic that follows is uncomfortable: the tenders you win are disproportionately the ones with something missing, because the missing piece is what made your number the lowest. Win on a price like that and the loss is signed in on day one, and the only routes back, variations and claims, are the expensive kind of surveying, fought uphill for money that should have been in the tender.
The cheap fix sits before submission: a second pair of eyes on the build-up, the rates, the prelims and the exclusions, while the number is still a keystroke.
The solution
A check on the price before it becomes a contract.