Re-qualifying at pricing: what changed since the first bid decision?

What is re-qualification at pricing?

It is a second bid/no-bid call, made when the price file is being built, against the same three axes as week one. The question is not “are we still enthusiastic.” It is “what changed since we said bid, and who is allowed to accept that change.”

Week one is often a conditional yes: named lead, assumed margin, assumed volumes, a qualification the firm intends to put in the offer. Pricing is where those conditions meet a workbook, an addendum and a roster that has moved. If you do not re-open the call, the condition has been waived by silence.

What do you compare?

Five fields, initial versus current. Scope: what the pack now requires you to deliver, including addenda. Margin: the delivery-floor price against any price-to-win figure now on the table; the arithmetic lives on price to win versus price to deliver, and the quantities live in the pricing schedule. Capacity: named people and the delivery window if you win. Contract qualifications: what you planned to mark as a departure, and what the pack or a clarification now does with that mark. Evidence: certificates, insurance, clearances and case studies that must still be true at close.

Anything that cannot be named in those five fields is not a delta. It is commentary.

Who can clear each change?

Use the same authority as the first gate. BD owns the recommendation. Delivery vetoes capacity. Finance vetoes risk. The managing director is accountable for the recorded call. The person building the price file prepares the delta. They do not vote it through.

A change without an owner is already a review. “We will sort the lead next week” is not a clearance. Clearance is a named person, a dated fact, and a signature on the record below.

What about the hours already spent?

They are sunk. Re-score as if they had not been spent. That is the whole of the zombie-bid test, applied at the price file rather than at the first draft. Finishing a tender because the estimate is half done is how a no-bid becomes a submission.

A qualification layer such as selrob is useful here only if the first call was written down. Without that record, pricing has nothing to compare and the second gate becomes another conversation.

What do approval, review and withdrawal look like?

Hypothetical. The buyer, tender and figures are invented to show the fields in use; they are not a client result. Three paths from the same Western Ranges delta. The hours already on the file are 38. They do not appear in the tests.

• Approval. Addendum 02 comes back capped at 5 percent of the monthly lump and does not stack with delay damages. Delivery names a deputy with diary space from 1 November. Recertification stays on 12 November. Finance rejects the $205,000 input and holds $224,300. BD recommends bid. MD records bid, dated, with those four facts as conditions. If any condition fails before close, the call re-opens.
• Review. The table above. Finance has 48 hours on the uncapped abatement. Delivery has until Friday to name the deputy. BD may not lodge, and may not keep building the price file as if the answer were yes. Review is a dated ticket, not a quiet continuation.
• Withdrawal. The $205,000 input stands, the consequential-loss departure is non-conforming, and no deputy exists. BD recommends no-bid. MD records no-bid the same day. The estimate is not finished “so the work is not wasted.” That sentence is the zombie.