Margin review before submission: a 15-minute habit

Every estimator has a story about the bid that won and immediately became a problem — a missed scope item, an outdated material price, a labor assumption that belonged to a different kind of project. Most of those bids share a trait: nobody reviewed the margin before submission.

What a pre-submission review checks

It doesn't need to be long. Fifteen structured minutes: does the margin match what this type of job historically returns? Are material prices current? Does the labor figure match your crew's actual production, not the hopeful version? Is anything in the drawings referenced but not priced?

Compare against your own history

The most powerful check is the simplest: how does this bid's margin per square foot, per unit, or per phase compare to your last five similar jobs — as they actually finished, not as they were estimated? Your books already hold this answer.

Winning work at the wrong margin is more expensive than losing it. A short review habit, grounded in real job-cost history, is how you bid to win the right projects.