How to write winning tender responses for civil works — methodology statements, non-price criteria, capability statements, project programming, and tender presentation for earthworks, drainage, road construction, and council maintenance contracts.
RESOURCES/TENDER WRITING Rock Batters and Slope Stabilisation: Cuttings, Rockfall and Working Under a Face Cuttings and slopes are priced from a long section and delivered from a face nobody has seen. Rock batter work and slope stabilisation combine the least reliable ground information on a project with the highest consequence of getting it wrong. In … Read more
RESOURCES/TENDER WRITING Street Lighting, Traffic Signals and Electrical Packages on Civil Projects The electrical package on a road job is small in value, long in lead time and controlled by parties you do not contract with. It is the most common cause of a project that is finished but cannot be energised, opened or handed … Read more
RESOURCES/TENDER WRITING Geosynthetics in Civil Construction: Specifying, Installing and Proving Them Geotextiles, geogrids, geomembranes and geocomposites are cheap materials that do expensive jobs. Substituting the wrong one, or installing the right one badly, produces a failure that appears years later and is nobody’s idea of a warranty claim. In this guide The families and what … Read more
RESOURCES/TENDER WRITING Concrete Supply, Placement and Testing on Civil Projects Ready mixed concrete is the most ordinary thing a civil contractor buys and the one most likely to produce a non-conformance. This is the delivery guide: specifying it, ordering it, placing it, curing it, testing it, and what to do when a result comes back … Read more
RESOURCES/PRICING & CONTRACTS Precast Concrete: Supply, Delivery and Erection on Civil Projects Precast concrete moves work off the critical path and into a factory — but only if the order is placed early, the interfaces are right and the crane can reach. When precast goes wrong it goes wrong late, expensively, and in front of … Read more
RESOURCES/TENDER WRITING Line Marking, Signage and Roadside Furniture: The Last Package, and the One That Holds Up Opening Marking, signs, guideposts and safety barrier are the smallest items in a road bill and the last things done before a road opens. They are also specialist, weather-dependent, standard-driven and frequently the reason a completion date slips … Read more
RESOURCES/TENDER WRITING Culverts, Headwalls and Drainage Structures: The Bit Between the Pipe and the Bridge A box culvert is priced as a supply-and-install line and delivered as a structure with a foundation, a bedding specification, joints that must seal, wingwalls that retain, and a scour problem that only appears in the first big storm. Culvert … Read more
RESOURCES/TENDER WRITING Document Control on a Bid and a Job: The Version That Went Out Was Not the One You Meant Bids are lost and jobs are built wrong for the same reason: somebody worked from a superseded document. It is not a filing problem. It is the mechanism by which an addendum is missed, … Read more
RESOURCES/GOVERNMENT PROCUREMENT Asset Management Plans and Whole-of-Life Cost: Where Council Civil Work Actually Comes From Council civil work is not generated by a tender. It is generated years earlier by an asset register, a condition assessment and a long-term financial plan — public documents that name the assets, the renewal year and the funding gap. … Read more
RESOURCES/WINNING STRATEGIES Owning a Pit: What Happens When a Civil Contractor Becomes a Quarry Operator Buying or opening a pit looks like the obvious answer to material cost and supply risk. Becoming a quarry operator is a different proposition. It is also entry into a separately regulated industry with extractive approvals, a rehabilitation bond, royalty … Read more
RESOURCES/TENDER WRITING Bulk Fuel Storage and Dangerous Goods: The Tank in the Compound Is a Licensed Installation Almost every civil site has a diesel tank, and almost nobody treats it as what it is — a dangerous goods installation with quantity thresholds, bunding requirements, placarding, manifests, separation distances and an emergency plan. It is also … Read more
RESOURCES/PREQUALIFICATION Safety in Design: The Designer Duty You Take On Without Noticing Work health and safety law places duties on whoever designs a structure — and a civil contractor picks those duties up the moment they propose an alternative, design temporary works, or take a design-and-construct package. Most do it without realising a duty attached, … Read more