Does my bum look big in this?
“Damned if you do, damned if you don’t”
SOME OF US OF A CERTAIN AGE will remember the Fast Show’s sketch: “Does my bum look big in this?”
A parody of 90s body image pressures, it poked fun at gender stereotypes, while also capturing the impossibility of a no-win question. Fast forward 25 years, and Arabella Weir has been replaced by QS’ procuring 2-stage tenders. The new loaded question?
“Please review our cost plan. Be honest….but we’ll be scoring your response.”
In competitive tendering, this isn’t a call for truth. It’s the opening move in a strategic game and in games, players optimise to win, not necessarily to help.
The Illusion of Feedback
When clients and their professional advisors request candid feedback during a competitive tender, they may believe they’re fostering transparency. The reality, they’ve inadvertently triggered game theory principles. Bidders aren’t neutral technical advisors; they are competitors, playing to win. And in that context, honesty carries risk:
- Raise issues, and you may look like the expensive or risk-averse option.
- Be the one who calls out the awkward truth, and risk being labelled “difficult” rather than insightful.
Unless candour is explicitly rewarded, strategic discretion becomes the rational strategy. Most teams will opt for selective signalling: appearing engaged without compromising position.
Strategic Realities
Two-stage tendering often encourages a “foot in the door” strategy: secure a winning position at Stage 1, then evolve the commercial shape of the project through cost plan creep or strategic descoping, once embedded. This isn’t deception. It’s a rational response to how the game is designed. When long-term opportunity hinges on early-stage compliance, candour becomes commercially risky.
Feedback is shaped precisely because the market is:
- Competing, not collaborating (yet).
- Optimising for positioning, not full transparency.
- Navigating a system that rewards compliance over candour.
But this strategic posture doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It’s reinforced, often unintentionally, by a set of behavioural and structural dynamics that can further suppress honest insight during the first stage.
Why First Stage often reveals very little
During the first stage of a two stage tender, bidders face a balancing act. On one hand, when reviewing a cost plan they need to ensure there’s enough headroom in rates and quantities to procure the works in a manner that is safe, well managed and covers off the risk of domestic variations. On the other, they must remain commercially competitive, avoiding any appearance of overpricing that may send the wrong signal to the client.
This delicate balance is further complicated by a trio of systemic and behavioural challenges:
- Anchoring: Receipt of a client side cost plan exerts significant gravitational pull. It sets a reference point that frames subsequent pricing conversations and subtly shapes how project teams perceive scope, value, and risk. Once a number is in play, flawed or not, it unconsciously influences what feels reasonable.
- Team Optimism: Front-end teams can often see the project through a more optimistic lens than their delivery counterparts. This isn’t just cognitive bias, it’s a reflection of role, motivation and mindset. These teams want the project to succeed: their professional relationships and short-term goals depend on keeping schemes viable. As a result, feedback can be unintentionally softened: risks feel manageable, gaps seem solvable, and complexity can be underplayed, not out of deception, but from a deep-seated belief in the project’s potential.
- Incomplete information and compressed timelines: First stage feedback is usually based on immature design and incomplete information, often RIBA Stage 2, where many requirements are either undefined or loosely specified. This is especially problematic with M&E packages, often representing 25–40% of the total works cost, yet are among the least detailed at this stage. Couple this with tight procurement timelines (e.g. a 4-6 week tender timeline), and the market simply lacks the opportunity to interrogate risk properly. The result: generalised commentary now, with sharper surprises later.
Given this environment, feedback tends to follow a familiar pattern: safe, non-contentious observations that signal diligence without unsettling expectations or triggering concern.
It’s not that the issues aren’t there. It’s that the evidence to raise them with confidence often isnt. And even when it is, voicing concerns carries risk – the system rarely rewards those who do.
Designing for Truth
Unless clients intentionally design procurement processes to reward honesty and counteract bias, feedback will continue to be shaped by competitive positioning – strategic, superficial and often optimistic.
The answer isn’t to ask for truth. It’s to design for it. In game theory terms, this means changing the equilibrium, reframing candour as a rational, low-risk move, not a reputational gamble:
Make Honesty a Low-Stakes, High-Reward Move
If feedback feels risky, it will be shaped accordingly. The early stages of procurement must be designed to make truth a safer, smarter move:
1. Create Low-Stakes Spaces for Candour: Use soft market testing or pre-market engagement to surface honest dialogue early, before scoring mechanisms or optics start shaping responses. Lower the stakes, and posturing becomes less necessary.
2. Reward constructive challenge: If clients want better forecasts, they must reward realism, not reassurance. Score and recognise bidders who identify gaps in scope or design, evaluate risks realistically, and propose practical mitigations.
This reframes critical thinking as competence, not confrontation, and signals that insight is valued over compliance.
Reframe Cost Plans to Encourage Dialogue
Numbers aren’t neutral. How cost data is presented shapes how it is received.
1. Present cost plans with ranges, not absolutes: A single number acts as a psychological anchor. A transparent range, paired with defined assumptions, exclusions and specific allowances for points of volatility (e.g. such as inflation risk) and creates space for analytical engagement.
2. Be clear on risk ownership: Follow NRM 1 guidance by distinguishing separate provisions for design development risks, construction phase risks and employer change risks. Ensure alignment between the cost plan, risk allocation model, and contract structure.
3. Ask better questions: Generic commentary yields vague reassurance. Instead, ask:
- Which cost plan line items are most sensitive to price volatility and why?
- Which cost plan line items or packages do you consider high confidence, and which are low and why?”
- What are the primary sources of uncertainty?
- What information or clarification would increase confidence? To get closer to the market’s actual view of risk, exposure, and opportunity invite commentary around how sure they are, not just what they think.
Shift focus to the root cause – design ambiguity, not just rates:
Cost plans at RIBA Stage 2 are rarely flawed because the rates are necessarily wrong. More often, they fail because the context underpinning those rates is incomplete.
Procurement packs for 2-stage tenders typically rely on information where:
- Requirements are incomplete or subject to change,
- Designs haven’t yet translated into detailed measurable quantities—beyond broad-brush m² allowances, and
- Rates, while broadly defensible, carry embedded assumptions that reflect design expectations not yet defined—many of which only emerge at RIBA Stage 3, and not always via a formal or managed change process.
The result is a false sense of certainty. The cost plan may appear robust, but it rests on vague and shifting foundations. So tackle the root cause. So rather than asking contractors to comment on the cost plan itself, ask them to interrogate the design information that feeds into it.
What design gaps – if left unresolved – are most likely to drive cost escalation or additional time?
Move the conversation upstream, to where costs are shaped, not just calculated.
Plan for an Imperfect System
Even with better incentives, sharper questions, and improved design data, feedback at Stage 1 will always be imperfect. Optimism will colour judgement. Strategic caution will shape tone.
So don’t just design for honesty, design for fallibility. Optimism is not the problem. Unacknowledged optimism is. Recognise that both clients and contractors are emotionally and commercially invested in making the scheme work. Then retain contingency accordingly.
Most feedback loops in construction aren’t designed for truth. They’re designed as procurement gateways and they reward compliance. But systems can be redesigned.
The question shouldn’t be: “How do we get honest feedback?” It’s “How do we build a system where honesty is the smartest move?”
Design for candour, not choreography. Create an approach where the market can afford to answer truthfully.
Not “Does my Bum Look Big in this?”
