The first 48 hours with a new tender: the ten clauses to read before anything else
In the first 48 hours with a new tender you read ten clauses, not the whole pack. They are the ones that decide whether you should bid at all, what the submission must physically contain, and what it will cost you if a position turns out to be wrong.
Those ten are the order of precedence, the tender validity, liquidated damages, security, payment terms, limitation of liability, the variation mechanism, the programme and separable portions, the conformance and qualification rules, and the submission mechanics. Read in that spirit, the pack stops being a thousand files and becomes about forty pages that matter first.
Finding and quoting those ten across a large pack is reading work. Elora Grid returns them with each clause quoted and cited to its document and page. What they mean for your risk appetite is your team's call.
Why these ten and not the whole pack?
Because they are the clauses that cannot be discovered late without cost. A technical requirement found in week three is just work you add to the estimate, and that is survivable. A liability cap found then may mean the tender was never biddable on terms your business accepts.
The rest of the pack still gets read, in the kick-off and during pricing. These ten are simply the ones that decide whether the rest is worth reading.
What are you looking for in each one?
Not a summary. A quote. Copy the clause into your risk list word for word with its number, because the difference between "the Contractor shall" and "the Contractor should endeavour to" is the whole position, and it does not survive paraphrasing.
Then note two things against each: what it obliges you to do, and what happens if you cannot. A liquidated damages clause without its rate and cap is only half read.
Which of the ten is skipped most often?
Order of precedence, because everyone files it under administration. It is the clause that decides which document wins when the specification and the drawings disagree, and on an engineered project they will disagree.
Limitation of liability runs a close second, usually because it sits in a contract document nobody opened while everyone was reading the scope. Both are cheap to read and expensive to discover late.
What do you do with what you find?
Three things, immediately. The commercial clauses go into the bid/no-bid score, so the decision to chase is made on the terms rather than on the scope alone. Anything ambiguous becomes a clarification while the question period is still open.
Everything else goes into the kick-off risk list, quoted, so that the estimator pricing in week two is pricing against the actual words rather than someone's recollection of them.
The ten clauses
| Clause | What to pull out of it | What it changes |
|---|---|---|
| Order of precedence | The ranked list of documents, and whether addenda sit above them | How every scope conflict is resolved for the whole bid |
| Tender validity | The period, and any client right to extend it | Which supplier quotes expire before award |
| Liquidated damages | The rate, the trigger and the cap, if there is one | Programme risk pricing, and the bid/no-bid score |
| Security | Form, amount, and when it reduces or is released | Working capital, and your bank facility |
| Payment terms | Claim cycle, payment period, retention | Cash flow across the delivery period |
| Limitation of liability | The cap, the carve-outs, and any consequential loss position | Whether the tender is biddable on terms you accept |
| Variation mechanism | How a change is instructed, valued and time-barred | Whether scope growth is recoverable in practice |
| Programme and separable portions | Milestone dates, and any portions with their own dates and damages | Resourcing, and how damages actually accrue |
| Conformance and qualification | Whether qualifications are permitted at all | How a risk you cannot carry must be handled |
| Submission mechanics | Lodgement method, format, addenda acknowledgement, question cut-off | Whether the bid is accepted for evaluation |
- 01Find the conditions of tender and the contract, and read those two first. Nine of the ten clauses live there, not in the scope documents everyone opens first.
- 02Quote each clause verbatim into one risk list. Clause number, exact wording, and the obligation it creates, in a single page.
- 03Score the bid/no-bid on the commercial five. Liability, damages, security, payment and validity, before any estimating hours are committed.
- 04Lodge the clarifications the same week. Anything ambiguous goes as a question while the question period is open, not as a qualification later.
- 05Hand the quoted list into the kick-off. The risk list becomes an input to the kick-off rather than a document read once and filed.
Common questions
What should you read first in a tender?
The conditions of tender and the contract, not the scope. Ten clauses decide whether you can bid and what the bid must contain: order of precedence, validity, liquidated damages, security, payment, limitation of liability, variations, programme and separable portions, conformance rules, and submission mechanics.
Why read the contract before the scope?
Because a scope you can deliver under terms your business cannot accept is not an opportunity, and only the contract tells you which one you are looking at. Finding that out in week three has already cost you the estimating hours.
How long should the first pass take?
Hours rather than days, if the ten clauses are found and quoted rather than the pack being read cover to cover. The output is one page: ten quoted clauses with the obligation each creates. That page is what the bid/no-bid decision and the kick-off both run on.
Can Elora Grid extract the ten clauses for you?
Yes. Hand it the pack and it returns each of the ten quoted verbatim with its clause number, cited to the document and page it came from, along with any place the pack is silent. What that means for your risk appetite stays with your team.