Waiting on Supplier Prices: How to Send RFQs the Same Day the Tender Lands

The tender lands on a Monday. It closes Friday week. You know the drawings need to go out to your suppliers, but first someone has to work out what to ask them for. So the pack sits while the takeoff gets done, and by the time the requests go out it’s Thursday. Now the suppliers have a few days, the price comes back the afternoon the tender closes, and the quote goes out on a guess or not at all.

The suppliers aren’t the slow part. The request is.

Why are you always waiting on supplier prices?

Because the RFQ is stuck behind the takeoff. On most commercial jobs the process runs in a line: sort the pack, count and measure, type up the BOQ, then ask suppliers for prices. Every day the takeoff takes is a day the supplier doesn’t get.

We hear the same story on calls. On a big job the drawings are dense enough that the estimator prints them at A3 just to read them, then scales everything off by hand. That takes days. The drawings go out to suppliers, and then everyone waits for prices.

There’s a second cost. When the RFQ is rushed, it’s vague. “Please price the attached drawings” gets you a number for whatever the supplier thought you meant, and you only find out what they left out when you’re comparing prices at the last minute.

What should a supplier RFQ include?

A good RFQ means the supplier can price it without ringing you, and you can compare the replies line by line. Here’s what to put in every one.

Include	Why it matters	Where it comes from
Item, part number or description	The supplier prices what you’ll actually install	Your BOQ
Quantity and unit	Prices come back for the right amount	Your checked takeoff
Drawing number and revision	Nobody prices off a superseded sheet	The tender document register
Project name and builder	The supplier can match it to other enquiries on the same job	The tender invitation
Date you need prices by	Leaves you time to review before the tender closes	Tender close date, less your review time
What the price should include	Delivery, GST and validity are stated, not assumed	Your standard request
A request to list exclusions	A cheap supplier price can hide expensive exclusions	Your standard request

The last row is the one most often skipped. Before you pick the cheapest price, check what’s been left out. Three supplier totals that cover three different scopes aren’t comparable.

How do you get RFQs out the same day the tender lands?

You can’t skip the takeoff, but you can stop it holding everything else up. Here’s the order that works:

1. Register the pack first. List every drawing and its revision before anything else, so every RFQ points at the current sheets.
2. Send the schedule items straight away. Equipment that’s fully scheduled on the drawings can usually be priced from the schedule. Those requests don’t need to wait for your count.
3. Get the quantities checked, not just counted. For anything priced on quantity, the RFQ is only as good as the takeoff behind it. Check each line against the drawing it came from before it goes to a supplier.
4. Build the RFQ from the BOQ, not from the drawings. Once the BOQ is confirmed, the part numbers, quantities and drawing references are already there. Turning them into a request is copying, not estimating.
5. Use one standard request. The same inclusions, the same “list your exclusions” line and a reply-by date, every time. You stop rewriting it for every tender.
6. Set the reply-by date from the close date. Work backwards from when the tender closes and leave yourself time to review the prices before you approve the quote.

Sample data. An unpriced BOQ already holds what an RFQ needs: part number, description, quantity, and the drawing and revision each line came from.

Why does checking the quantities first save time?

Because a wrong quantity in an RFQ costs you twice. The supplier prices it, you put that price into your workbook, and when the error turns up you’re re-asking the supplier and repricing the job, usually the day before it closes.

If every line of the takeoff shows where it came from, checking it is a look, not a recount. We go through how to do that in how to check every line of an AI takeoff. The faster the quantities are confirmed, the sooner the RFQs go out.

Why can’t you just look up prices online?

Because those aren’t your prices. A contractor told us the prices you find online are nothing like the trade prices their business actually pays. Your margin depends on what your suppliers actually charge you, which is why the RFQ is worth sending properly in the first place. A plausible number from a website is not the same as a price your supplier will stand behind.

How do we take the RFQ off your plate?

We set up a custom estimating plugin in your own Claude or ChatGPT business account. It runs the 15 steps a careful estimator works through, in four stages, and supplier RFQs sit in the pricing stage:

Stage	What the plugin does	Where you come in
Drawings to quantities (steps 1–7)	Registers every file in the pack with its revision, agrees the scope, counts, measures and builds the BOQ in your layout. Each line shows its drawing cut-out, legend line, drawing number and revision	Nothing, unless the scope is unusual
Confirm the BOQ (step 8)	Anything it couldn’t settle is flagged, never guessed	You check and confirm the BOQ
Pricing (steps 9–13)	Drafts RFQs for your suppliers, then loads your rates and labour hours, each rate with its source and date. A missing or expired rate is flagged, never filled in	You press send on the RFQs, then approve the price
Quotes and changes (steps 14–15)	A quote letter on your letterhead. When an addendum lands, only what changed is re-measured and re-priced	You approve each letter

The RFQs are drafted from the BOQ you’ve just confirmed, so the quantities in them are the ones you’ve checked. Nothing goes to a supplier until you press send, and nothing goes to the builder until you’ve approved it.

For the rest of the quoting process, see our checklist for quoting faster without cutting corners.

Is it worth a look?

If you’re a commercial subcontractor quoting from drawings, in HVAC, electrical or solar, and supplier prices are always the last thing back, yes. We build it from three of your quoted jobs, your pricing sheet and your quote template, and prove it on those jobs before you rely on it. It’s A$6,000, one fixed fee, backed by our 14-day money-back guarantee.

See how our estimating plugin works, or book a call and bring a recent tender.