Tenders as Reconnaissance

A spa remodel we're managing was supposed to start on February 23rd.

It didn't.

Not because of permits or pricing.

Because of a walkthrough.

We tendered the work with three contractors. One of them, who had won many of our previous tenders, won again.

The day after signing, they walked away.

We restarted the tender.

I went with one of the new contractors to walk the site. He stopped in the first room and pointed at the wall. Then another. Then another.

Termite tunnels.

Once you saw them, they were everywhere.

Three contractors had walked the same site for the same scope and hadn't flagged it.

This one saw it in minutes.

We paused the project.

The client would have had a beautiful new spa sitting on top of an active termite problem. By the time it surfaced, the finishes would have hidden the source, and the cost of finding and fixing it would have been several multiples of treating it now.

What made that visit different wasn't competence.

The previous contractors are competent people.

It was scope.

A remodel tender asks: what will it cost to deliver this scope?

It doesn't ask: what's wrong with what's already there?

The first three walked the site looking at the question they'd been asked to price.

The new contractor happened to be looking at something else.

A tender across several contractors ends up being more than price discovery.

It becomes site reconnaissance under different lenses.

Bringing different people through the same project, each with a slightly different frame, surfaces things one walkthrough will miss.

The remodel is now months behind the original plan.

The client is in much better shape than the plan would have left them.