What did this bid actually cost?
Hypothetical, to show the shape, not a client result. Planned: 48 hours at a blended $210, or $10,080, plus $1,500 external graphics. Actual: 61 hours at the same blend, or $12,810, plus the same $1,500: total $14,310 against a $11,580 plan. The $2,730 variance is not an overrun to explain away; it is the most honest number the firm owns about what this tender type costs. Feed it to the calculator defaults and to cost per win for the period.
What does close-out cost on top?
Debrief attendance and write-up: 3 hours. Lessons-learned row with owner and follow-up: 1 hour, see the template. Library extraction: methodology paragraphs, CV updates, project write-up sanitised for reuse: 4 hours, capped, assigned, not an open-ended “harvest everything” exercise. Total incremental: 8 hours, or about $1,680 at the same blend, spent deliberately or not at all. Uncapped close-out is how a lost bid keeps billing after death.
What is worth reusing?
Content with a next user: methodology passages that fit live pursuits, evidence the library lacked, referee relationships warmed by the process. Each asset carries maintenance (verification, updating, ownership) or it decays into confidently wrong boilerplate. Sunk spend is not a future recovery benefit: the $14,310 does not discount the next bid by a dollar. Only maintained, reusable assets do, and only by the hours they actually save, measured later, not assumed now.
What does this mean for the bid/no-bid call?
It means the next one carries better numbers: truer budgets, a library with one more verified asset, and a lessons row with a follow-up date. Close-out done right shortens the next gate; close-out skipped guarantees the next estimate repeats this one’s optimism.