Tenders

The Tenders area is where work is estimated and priced before it becomes a live job. A tender moves through a simple lifecycle, and winning it automatically creates the job — carrying your pricing and drawings across so nothing is re-keyed.

The lifecycle

Draft → Submitted → Won / Lost

Use the Update status button on a tender to move it along:

Mark as Submitted — you've sent your price to the client.
Mark as Won — creates the live job (see below).
Mark as Lost — closes the tender off.

Statuses move forwards only. If a tender is marked Won or Lost by mistake, an administrator can correct it.

Creating a tender

Go to Tenders → New tender.
A tender reference (e.g. TND-2026-AB12C) is generated for you.
Pick the Client and Project — you can create either inline without leaving the form.
Set the Estimator, Project Manager, submission deadline and estimated net value.
Record any exclusions / clarifications in the notes.
Upload drawings to the Document Vault (PDF, JPG or PNG, up to 20 files).

The tender list highlights returns that are overdue or due within 48 hours, so nothing slips past its deadline.

Pricing the Bill of Quantities

Each tender has a Bill of Quantities (BoQ) worked across three steps:

Build — set up sections and line items.
Price — apply unit rates and build-ups.
Packages — group items into trade packages for subcontractor enquiries.

Use Adjudication to add prelims, overheads, profit and discounts and turn your net cost into a tender price. The full maths is in the Bill of Quantities and Adjudication & Trade Packages guides.

Take-off from drawings

Open any drawing in the Documents area to measure quantities directly off it — lengths, areas and counts — then link those measurements to BoQ line items so the quantities flow straight into your pricing. See the Take-off & Markup guide for calibration and how each measurement is calculated.

Clarifications

Track tender queries (questions to the client and their answers) as clarifications, with a status of pending, answered or incorporated.

Winning a tender

When you Mark as Won, Bidix creates the live job and carries over:

the priced Bill of Quantities,
all drawings and their scale calibration, and
every take-off markup, still linked to the right BoQ items.

If your plan's live-job limit has been reached, you'll be prompted to upgrade before the job is created.

Tip: Get the BoQ and take-off right at tender stage — it all becomes the baseline for the job, its valuations and the final account.

Bill of Quantities (BoQ)

The Bill of Quantities is the priced schedule of everything the works contain. It's the heart of the estimate at tender stage and the cost baseline once the job is live. Get it right and it drives your pricing, your Cost Value Reconciliation, your Cashflow Forecast and your Final Account — all from one source.

How a BoQ is structured

A BoQ is built in three layers:

Layer	What it is	Example
Section	A heading that groups items	"Roofing", "Preliminaries"
Item	A measured line: quantity × unit rate	"Slate roofing — 250 m²"
Build-up	The cost lines that make an item's rate	Labour + Slates + Battens

Items can be nested under a parent item to create sub-totals. Only the bottom-level (leaf) lines are counted in the BoQ total — parent/heading rows group their children but are never double-counted.

How a line total is calculated

Each item line is simply:

 1Line total = Quantity × Unit rate

Quantities can be typed in, or measured straight off a drawing with the Take-off tool and linked to the item — see the Take-off guide.

How a unit rate is built up

Rather than guessing a rate, you can build it from its components. Each build-up line has a type (Labour, Material, Plant or Subcontract), a quantity and a cost. The item's unit rate is the sum of its build-up lines:

 1Unit rate = Σ (build-up cost × build-up quantity)

Worked example — a roofing rate (per m²):

Labour: 0.4 hr × £28/hr = £11.20

Slates: 1.05 m² × £24/m² = £25.20

Battens & fixings: £3.10

Unit rate = £39.50/m². At 250 m², the line total is £9,875.

Build-up types matter: they let the system analyse your cost by Labour / Material / Plant / Subcontract, which powers the budget column in the CVR and the labour/material uplifts in Adjudication.

The BoQ net cost

 1BoQ net cost = Σ all leaf-item line totals

This is your cost — before any margin. Turning it into a tender price is the job of Adjudication (see that guide).

Working the BoQ

At tender stage the BoQ is worked in three steps, each with its own screen:

Build — set up sections and items (the structure).
Price — apply unit rates and build-ups.
Packages — group items into Trade Packages for subcontractor enquiries (see the Adjudication & Trade Packages guide).

Importing

A BoQ can be imported from a spreadsheet to save re-keying a client's pricing schedule — useful when you're given a blank bill to price.

Tip: Always classify your build-up lines by type. It costs nothing extra at pricing time and unlocks accurate budget-vs-actual analysis later in the CVR.

Adjudication & Trade Packages

Adjudication is where you turn a BoQ's net cost into the tender price you submit — adding your prelims, overheads, profit and discounts in a clear, auditable order. Trade Packages help you test that cost against real subcontractor quotes first.

The adjudication waterfall

Bidix applies your adjustments in a fixed, transparent sequence. Starting from the BoQ net cost:

Step	Adjustment	Calculation
1	Labour & material uplifts	Add `labour cost × labour %` and `material cost × material %` to the net
2	Prelims & contingency	Add the fixed prelims sum and contingency sum
3	Overheads	`× overheads %` on the running total
4	Profit	`× profit %` on the post-overheads total → net sell
5	Main contractor's discount (MCD)	`tender price = net sell ÷ (1 − MCD %)`

The labour/material uplifts in step 1 use the build-up cost analysis from your BoQ — which is why classifying build-up lines by type matters.

Margin vs markup

Two figures are reported, and they are not the same thing:

 1Margin %  = (net sell − net cost) ÷ net sell  × 100   (profit as a share of price)
 2Markup %  = (net sell − net cost) ÷ net cost  × 100   (uplift on cost)

Worked example — £100,000 net cost (£40k labour, £50k material, £10k other):

Step Result

Labour uplift 5% + material uplift 3% +£2,000 + £1,500 → £103,500

+ Prelims £5,000 + Contingency £2,000 £110,500

+ Overheads 10% (£11,050) £121,550

+ Profit 12% (£14,586) £136,136 (net sell)

÷ (1 − 2.5% MCD) £139,629 (tender price)

Margin = 26.6% of price · Markup = 36.1% on cost.

Step	Result
Labour uplift 5% + material uplift 3%	+£2,000 + £1,500 → £103,500
+ Prelims £5,000 + Contingency £2,000	£110,500
+ Overheads 10% (£11,050)	£121,550
+ Profit 12% (£14,586)	£136,136 (net sell)
÷ (1 − 2.5% MCD)	£139,629 (tender price)

Applying the price

When you apply the adjudication:

on a tender, it sets the tender's estimated value;
on a job, it sets the contract sum.

That figure then becomes the baseline everything else measures against.

Trade Packages

Before committing to a price, you can carve the BoQ into Trade Packages — one per trade (e.g. Groundworks, Roofing, M&E) — and send them out for quotes.

Items are grouped by their primary trade, and packages can be created automatically from the trades on your items.
A package's estimate value is the sum of its BoQ line totals.
You record each subcontractor's return (their quoted total, and optionally a price per line).

Comparing returns

The comparison matrix lines every subcontractor's prices up side by side and highlights the cheapest per line and the cheapest overall total, so you can see at a glance who's most competitive — and spot a quote that's missed items.

Awarding

When you award a package, you can apply the awarded rates back onto the BoQ items — replacing your estimated rates with the real subcontract prices, so your cost baseline reflects what you'll actually pay.

Tip: Adjudicate after you've tested the big packages in the market. Real subcontract rates make your net cost — and therefore your margin — far more reliable.

Take-off & Markup

The Take-off tool lets you measure quantities directly off a PDF drawing — lengths, areas and counts — and feed them straight into your Bill of Quantities. Open any drawing from a tender or job's Documents to start.

The workflow

Open the drawing.
Calibrate the page scale (do this first — measuring is locked until you do).
Measure — draw lines, areas or counts.
Link each measurement to one or more BoQ items.
Export an annotated PDF and a measurement schedule if you need a record.

1. Calibrate the scale

Bidix has to know how many real-world metres a pixel represents. Two ways:

Known dimension — draw a line along something of known length (say a 5 m grid line) and type in the real distance. The scale is then:
```
 1scale factor = real distance ÷ line length in pixels
```
Standard ratio — pick a drawing ratio (1:50, 1:100, …) and the base unit (m/cm/mm); Bidix works the scale out from the page geometry.

The scale is saved per page. If you re-calibrate later, every existing measurement on that page is recalculated automatically from its original geometry — you never have to re-draw.

Measurements are locked until the page is calibrated — a red banner reminds you. This stops accidental "uncalibrated" quantities entering your BoQ.

2. Measurement types and how they're calculated

Tool	Measures	How
Linear / polyline	Length (m, lm)	Sum of segment lengths × scale
Polygon area	Area (m²)	Shoelace formula × scale²
Rectangle	Area (m²)	width × height × scale²
Ellipse	Area (m²)	π × r₁ × r₂ × scale²
Count	Number (nr)	1 per pin placed

Areas scale by the square of the scale factor; lengths scale linearly. Hold Shift while drawing to lock to horizontal/vertical.

3. Modifiers — pitch and depth

Two adjustments handle 3-D reality from a 2-D drawing:

Pitch (for areas) — corrects a plan area to a sloped (true) area:
```
 1true area = plan area ÷ cos(pitch°)
```
A 100 m² roof plan at 30° pitch = 100 ÷ cos 30° = 115.47 m².
Depth/height (for lengths) — turns a length into an area:
```
 1area = length × depth     (unit changes from m to m²)
```
A 20 m wall run at 3 m high = 20 × 3 = 60 m².

4. Deductions (voids)

Mark a measurement as a deduction to subtract it — for openings, voids or omissions. Deductions draw with a dashed outline and are netted off the linked BoQ item (the quantity is never allowed to go below zero).

5. Linking to the BoQ

A measurement can feed one or many BoQ items, and an item can be fed by many measurements — so you can take off guttering (linear metres) plus downpipes, outlets and stop-ends (counts) and roll them into one item, or split one measurement across several.

When measurements are linked, the BoQ item's quantity is recomputed as:

 1quantity = max( 0 , Σ (each measurement, deductions subtracted) )

Worked example — one BoQ item fed by three measurements:

Roof area (polygon): +120 m²

Extra dormer (polygon): +15 m²

Rooflight void (deduction): −4 m²

BoQ quantity = 120 + 15 − 4 = 131 m².

The item adopts the unit from the first non-deduction measurement.

6. Layers and export

Group measurements into layers (e.g. by trade or floor) and toggle their visibility. When you're done, export an annotated PDF with your markups and a measurement schedule for the record.

Tip: Calibrate first, measure second, link last. Because re-calibration recalculates everything automatically, a scale you fix later won't cost you the morning's take-off.

Resource Library

Resource Build-up