The cost of doing it by hand
The expensive mistakes are the ones nobody sees.
Comparing submissions manually is not hard because it is complicated. It is hard because it is enormous, repetitive, and unforgiving of a single lapse in attention.
01
Weeks of one person's full attention
Four bids against one BOQ is four line-by-line reads of a document running to hundreds of pages, cross-referenced against each other and against what you asked for. Done properly, it takes weeks. Done at the pace the programme actually allows, it becomes sampling rather than checking — and everyone in the room knows it.
02
Nobody reads line 2,400 the way they read line 12
Attention degrades long before the pages run out, and the work is unforgiving of exactly that. Exclusions and qualifications are rarely in the priced lines where the reviewer is looking — they sit in covering letters, preambles and appendices, written to be easy to miss.
03
A missing item never announces itself
If a bidder has simply left a scope out, their total looks better for it, and nothing on the page is wrong. Absence is invisible unless somebody notices a line that is not there, in a schedule of thousands that are. The cheapest bid is often just the least complete one.
04
Every week of review is a week of programme
While the comparison drags, award slips. Bid validity lapses, prices are resubmitted, rates move, and the start date shifts right — all of it spent before anyone is on site, and none of it recoverable later.
And whatever is missed at tender gets priced after award, as a variation — one contractor, no competition, and none of the leverage you had when four of them were still bidding.