AI tendering for painters and decorators

Price a decorating tender by measuring wall, ceiling and woodwork areas from the drawings, applying the system on the finishes schedule to each surface, and pricing per m² from your gang's output and paint per m². Add mist coats, doors and frames, access and return visits as separate lines. AI measures the rooms; you judge the prep.

What makes decorating tenders hard to price?

Painting is the last trade in, so it inherits everyone else's delays and damage. A decorating package arrives as floor plans, a finishes schedule and a spec naming a paint system, and the main contractor wants a rate per m² or a lump sum. What the documents don't show is the state of the surfaces when you arrive.

The problems on most decorating tenders:

• Measuring. Walls aren't drawn as areas, so they must be worked out from plans and heights.
• Finishes schedules. One system for walls, another for ceilings, another for woodwork, by room.
• Prep standard. "Prepare surfaces" can mean a light sand or days of filling.
• Mist coats on new plaster, often missing from the schedule.
• Return visits. Snagging, touch-ups after M&E, out-of-sequence rooms.
• Access to stairwells, atriums and high ceilings.
• Occupied buildings and maintenance contracts, with working hours and protection.

How do you measure and price a decorating package from the drawings?

Work out wall area room by room from the perimeter and height, take off the openings, then price per m² for each system. Add mist coats, doors and frames as their own lines.

Sixty m² a day for two decorators putting two coats on clear office walls is a different output from a stairwell with cut-ins at every landing. Run the calculator for each system and each kind of space.

Can you price the painting from the finishes schedule alone?

Sometimes, on new build with measurable drawings and a full system per surface. On refurbishment, rarely: the schedule tells you the finish, not what's under it.

On older buildings, prep can carry a health risk as well as a cost. HSE says lead pigments were widely used in paints until the 1960s and weren't removed from all commonly used paint until the early 1980s, so lead can be found under newer paintwork. It recommends leaving sound paintwork in place where it's covered by newer paint, and using methods that limit dust and fume, such as chemical strippers or wet abrasive paper and a scraper. Price the method, or exclude the work.

What should a decorating tender qualify?

Prep standard, return visits, access and colour changes. Those are where decorating packages lose money.

Tender: project name, decorating package
Our price: £amount excluding VAT, dated date

1. Priced from drawings numbers and finishes schedule reference and revision, systems as listed: list by surface.
2. Prep priced as light sand, fill minor defects and spot prime. Making good of damage by others, cracks wider than mm mm and replastering excluded.
3. Mist coat to new plaster included where shown. Plaster assumed dry and sound before decoration starts.
4. Price includes number visits per area: main decoration and number return visits for touch-ups. Further visits at £rate per visit.
5. Colours as schedule reference. Colour changes after ordering, and feature walls not shown, at our rates.
6. Access by stepladders and towers up to m m working height. Scaffolds, MEWPs and access to stairwells and atriums beyond this excluded unless listed.
7. Working hours hours, days. Out-of-hours working in occupied areas at our rates.
8. Existing paintwork assumed free of lead. If lead paint is found, preparation will be agreed and valued separately.
9. Protection of floors and fittings by dust sheets included. Floor protection boards by others.
10. Price valid for number days.

For the general wording rules, see tender qualifications and exclusions. On maintenance contracts and framework bids for councils and housing associations, quality answers often carry as much weight as price: see quality vs price scoring.

What can AI do on a decorating tender, and what can't it?

AI is good at measuring rooms and reading schedules; it can't see the walls.

What it does well:

• Measuring rooms from scaled plans and stated heights, room by room.
• Reading finishes schedules and matching systems to surfaces.
• Spotting gaps: no mist coat on new plaster, rooms missing from the schedule, programme clashes.
• Drafting qualifications from your standard list.

What still needs you:

• Prep. The state of the walls when you arrive.
• Output. Your gang's speed on this building.
• Lead and old surfaces, and the method you'll use.
• Sign-off on the price and the qualifications.

Which decorating tenders should you bid?

Ones with a full finishes schedule, a sensible programme between plastering and painting, and a limit on return visits you can price. Use the 10-minute tender read, and walk away from packages that want "all making good" in a fixed sum, or unlimited touch-ups until handover. For how Nexley works for fit-out and finishing trades more widely, see the fit-out trade page.

Common questions