Guides
What we learned doing
the work ourselves.
Every guide here comes out of our own book — the bid analysis, the catalog of priced codes, the remittance reconciliation. Where we do not have something specific and measured to say, we have not written a page.
- Bidding · 6 min
How to write a bid that gets approved
The shape of a bid write-up that survives review, taken from 17,587 bid documents. Measurement, standard, scope, documentation — and why ALL-CAPS notes lose by up to 27 points.
- Photos · 5 min
Photo requirements that keep a work order from bouncing
What a photo set has to prove before a national will accept it: identification, before, during, after, measurement and the specific shots each work type demands.
- Bidding · 4 min
Why bids get rejected
The real reasons a preservation bid comes back declined — and which of them you can do something about.
- Getting paid · 6 min
How nationals pay, and why it never reconciles
Five nationals, five remittance formats, and the specific traps in each: clawbacks netted out of check totals, invoices that span many orders, and cheque numbers that mean nothing was paid.