Tender qualifications and exclusions: protecting your price

Qualify a tender by sending a short schedule with your price that lists what's included, what's excluded and every assumption the price rests on, each tied to a document or drawing number. Keep it specific and short. On public tenders, check first whether qualifications are allowed: a qualified bid can be treated as non-compliant and disregarded.

What's the difference between a qualification and an exclusion?

An exclusion names work or cost you haven't included: "Excludes asbestos removal." A qualification states an assumption or condition the price depends on: "Based on drawings A-101 to A-110 revision C." Both protect your price by making clear what it covers, so that anything outside it becomes a variation.

A third type, the clarification, explains how you've read something unclear in the pack: "Spec clause 4.2 read as allowing an equivalent product." Many firms list all three under one heading.

Why do they matter?

Because a tender price is only a promise to do what's described for that sum. If the pack is vague and you don't say what you assumed, the main contractor or client will read it their way after you've signed, and the gap comes out of your margin.

That's nearly a third of the margin gone from one line nobody wrote. On a smaller job it can be all of it.

What should you qualify or exclude?

The things that most often go wrong are the same on most jobs. Read the pack with this list beside you and note anything that applies, with the document reference.

Many firms keep their exclusions in a Word document they paste into each quote. That's a sound start: a standard list you then edit for each tender, adding the specific drawing numbers and deleting what doesn't apply.

How do you word them?

Plainly, one point per line, with references. Copy the template below and fill in the brackets. Delete any line that doesn't apply; leaving in irrelevant exclusions makes the main contractor's estimator skim past the ones that matter.

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

Basis of price
1. Priced from drawings numbers and revisions and specification reference and revision. Changes to these will be valued as variations.
2. Price based on number visits and continuous working from start date. Additional visits charged at £rate per visit.
3. Working hours assumed hours, days. Work outside these hours will be charged as a variation.
4. Price valid for 30/60/90 days. Materials after that date are subject to supplier price changes, with invoices shown.

Included
5. List what is included, such as testing and certification.

Excluded
6. Asbestos survey, removal, and any delay or standing time caused by asbestos.
7. Builder's work in connection, chasing, making good and decoration, unless listed above.
8. Scaffolding, access towers and MEWPs. Or: towers included up to x m working height.
9. Welfare, skips, power and water, assumed provided by the main contractor.
10. Design, except any design included.
11. Work to existing services or conditions not shown on the drawings.

Clarifications
12. Spec clause read as allowing an equivalent product of the same performance.

Payment
13. Monthly applications for payment, with payment within number days. Retention not accepted / accepted at x%, released at practical completion.
14. VAT and CIS applied as required by HMRC rules at the time of invoice.

Can you qualify a public sector tender?

Often not, or only in limited ways. Under the Procurement Act 2023, the winning tender has to satisfy the buyer's requirements, and a buyer may disregard a tender that breaches a procedural requirement. Many public tenders say outright that qualified or varied bids will be rejected.

So for public work: raise your concerns as clarification questions before the deadline, where the answer is usually shared with all bidders, and price the risk into your rates if you can't qualify it. See the Procurement Act guide for small contractors for the wider rules. Private tenders and main contractor enquiries are where a qualifications schedule does most of its work.

What happens to your qualifications after you win?

They only protect you if they end up in the contract. When the order or subcontract arrives, check it either lists your tender with the qualifications or repeats them. If it says your tender is superseded, ask for the schedule to be added before you sign.

Then use it. When excluded work turns up, refer to the line number in your variation notice. See pricing variations for valuing it and writing quote exclusions for the domestic equivalent.

Common questions