The estimate's assumptions die at handover: carrying tender knowledge into delivery
Six months into delivery, the project team asks why the switchroom was priced without a spare cubicle. The estimator who knew has been on the next three bids since. Sound familiar?
What transfers at award is usually the price and the scope. What rarely transfers is everything underneath the price: the exclusions, the assumptions about site access and free issued equipment, which supplier quote each rate came from, and which clarification answer the team relied on. That knowledge is exactly what a variation claim is argued with later.
A handover record fixes it, and it is assembled from documents that already exist. Elora Grid pulls the qualifications, priced assumptions and clarification answers out of the submitted bid and returns them in one record, each cited to its source. What the project team does with them is a delivery decision.
What is lost at the estimate handover?
The reasoning under the number. Every serious tender price is built on positions the estimator took: scope read one way rather than another, an exclusion added because the drawings were silent, a rate accepted because a supplier held it for thirty days.
None of that lives in the price. It lives in the estimator's head, in a spreadsheet comment, and in an email thread nobody outside the bid team ever opens.
Why does it matter commercially?
Because a variation claim is an argument about what was in the price, and the party with the record wins it. A delivery team that cannot show an exclusion was stated will usually absorb the work rather than fight for it.
The reverse costs just as much. A team that claims for scope the tender clearly priced spends weeks on a claim that fails, and spends some of the client relationship along with it.
What belongs in the handover record?
Six things, and all of them already exist somewhere in the bid. The qualifications as submitted, and as they stood after negotiation, because those two lists are rarely identical. The assumptions behind priced lines. The supplier quotes with their references and validity dates.
Then the compliance matrix as submitted, the clarification register with the answers relied on, and the risks the team identified but chose not to price. That last list is the one delivery teams say they wish they had, and the one nobody writes down.
And back into the next bid
The same record is what makes a win/loss review worth holding. Six months of delivery tells you which assumptions held, which exclusions the client accepted in practice, and which rates were generous or thin once the work was real.
Without the record, that feedback has nothing to attach to, and the next estimate is built on the same guesses as the last one. With it, the loop runs the whole way: tender, delivery, and back into the next price.
The handover record
| What to carry across | Where it already lives | What it prevents |
|---|---|---|
| Qualifications, submitted and accepted | The bid, and the post-tender negotiation record | Delivering scope you excluded, or claiming scope you did not |
| Priced assumptions | Estimate notes, clarifications, the estimator's working | Silent absorption of work the price never covered |
| Supplier quotes and validity | The quote pack behind the estimate | Ordering at a price nobody realised had expired |
| Compliance matrix as submitted | The returnables | Committing again to something already agreed, or missing an obligation |
| Clarification answers relied on | The clarification register | Losing the client's own words that justified a position |
| Risks identified but not priced | Nowhere, usually | The delivery team meeting a known risk as a surprise |
- 01Build the record during the bid, not at award. Every qualification and assumption is written once, when it is made, not reconstructed months later.
- 02Capture the negotiated position separately. What you submitted and what survived negotiation are two different lists, and delivery needs the second.
- 03Attach a source to every line. The quote reference, the clause, or the clarification answer that justifies each position.
- 04Hold a handover with the estimator in the room. One meeting, walking the record, before the estimator is fully committed to the next bid.
- 05Send it back at the end. Once delivery is done, mark which assumptions held, and feed that into the win/loss review and the price book.
Common questions
What should a tender to delivery handover include?
The qualifications as submitted and as accepted, the assumptions behind priced lines, the supplier quotes with their validity, the compliance matrix, the clarification answers relied on, and the risks identified but not priced. All of it sourced, so any position can be evidenced later.
Who owns the handover record?
The bid manager builds it during the tender; the project manager receives it and keeps it current through delivery. It fails when it is treated as a document handed over once, rather than the reference both teams work from.
Is this not what the contract does?
The contract records what was agreed. It does not record why your price was what it was, which assumptions it rested on, or which of your qualifications the client accepted in the final round. That reasoning is what a variation argument turns on, and it lives outside the contract.
Can Elora Grid build the handover record?
Yes. Hand it the submitted bid, the clarification register and the supplier quotes, and it returns the qualifications, priced assumptions and relied-on answers as one record, each cited to its source document and page. What delivery does with the record stays with your project team.