From Tender to Contract: How Digital Workflows Reduce Risk & Improve Accountability

The buy-out phase of construction, from tender award through contract, remains one of the riskiest stages of the process. Why? Quite simply, the sheer volume of information handled by construction professionals at this stage in the process creates ample opportunity for error. Manual spreadsheets, email threads and late design changes create data loss, scope ambiguity and contractual disputes.

This is bad news at a time when construction profit margins are tight, with little room for risk-related losses. Yet despite their best efforts, QSs and commercial directors have traditionally struggled with the volatility that is inherent in buy-out. 

That’s how digital workflow software like ProcurePro came about—as a direct response to the myriad issues construction professionals have to navigate to mitigate risk. And who better to design this type of digital solution than someone who has first-hand experience of juggling the complexities of vetting subcontractors and assessing risk? 

We spoke to Tim Rogers, formerly construction project manager at Hutchinson, Co-Founder & Head of Product at ProcurePro. Tim has overseen over £3 bn of procurement packages and has first-hand insight into how digitisation shortens procurement, mitigates risk and improves commercial outcomes.

The Tender-to-Contract Gap and the Tale of Endless Admin

Every project manager will be able to relate to Tim’s experience of spending countless hours manually reconciling emails and spreadsheets, instead of focusing on strategic procurement and delivery readiness. As he tells Procore, it wasn’t any single ‘aha!’ moment that finally made him realise that there had to be a better way to organise procurement workflows:

The core concept that helped Tim co-develop ProcurePro is a sharable, centralised knowledge database that helps construction practitioners make better decisions and reduces risk.

From Individual Scope Gap Cases to a Content Library

It’s not as if project managers don’t factor scope gaps into their risk mitigation strategies; they do. The problem is, they are limited to their own experience because they don't have access to the lessons or knowledge of others, which prevents them from seeing important patterns in where scope gaps tend to emerge and why. As Tim puts it,

The solution is to develop a centralised Scope of Works content library that captures and evolves with the way a business operates. The library should be a living, breathing resource that adapts as the market changes, methodologies improve, new materials emerge, and scope gaps are identified. This ensures teams have a dynamic reference point that reflects current best practice, not just historical outcomes.

Digitising procurement workflows also improves project managers’ sense of agency and control over their selection of subcontractors. Digitisation in buy-out is not simply about efficiency for its own sake: the shifts are qualitative. Smarter decisions improve margins, and people who have access to longitudinal data inevitably learn more about risk than those who are stabbing in the dark on a contract-by-contract basis. 

Real-Time Project Visibility

Another aspect of buy-out that traditionally gets in the way of a project manager’s ability to gauge risk is the limited communication with project teams. 

Having a digital system like ProcurePro means that an executive can jump online and have a look at where a project's up to at every point in time. This gives them the ability to be more proactive, to identify risks earlier as opposed to once a month and implement mitigation strategies to reduce any shortcomings.

In essence, a digitised workflow helps shift executive behaviour: from a set amount of oversight to however much oversight they need to make timelier, more impactful decisions. 

Superior Document Management

On large commercial projects, the rate of change in drawings, specifications, and other documents is immense. That’s why procurement systems and document management systems must work cohesively. If subcontractors and the supply chain don’t have visibility of the latest documents, there’s a real risk they’ll price against outdated information - leading to costly surprises in the form of variations once contracts are awarded.

A digital ‘source of truth’ reduces the possibility that a crucial detail will be lost as the project is evolving. In the same way that high-rise residential projects are now required to keep a ‘golden thread’ of information about a building’s evolution, procurement professionals across the full spectrum of building projects can benefit from a similarly rigorous approach to record-keeping.

Mitigating Subcontractor Risk

Assessing and mitigating risk at the buy-out phase is especially crucial in the current climate where a number of risk factors threaten margins. Material costs have been an obvious and ongoing concern, but the issue that is emerging as critical right now is subcontractor insolvency. Tim confirms that this is the number one concern for procurement professionals as increasing numbers of subcontractors are going bust: 

The most obvious and detrimental impact of having a subcontractor go bust is, obviously, going over budget. And yet, subcontractor insolvency is very frequent, with 2,514 sub-contractor insolvency cases in 2024 alone.

Mitigating Against Sub-Contractor Insolvency

Despite how common it is, procurement professionals are far from powerless to mitigate against this type of risk.  In fact, procurement is the perfect stage of the process to implement controls and mitigation strategies to make sure you’re engaging financially healthy subcontractors. 

How? If you’re using a digital workflow system, like ProcurePro, you can see how many projects a subcontractor is already working on.

Knowing how many projects a sub-contractor is already working on - and how they’re pricing them - has additional benefits beyond risk mitigation. This information can become a source of bulk purchasing opportunities, which can further improve margins:

Implementation Roadmap: Is Workflow Digitisation Easy?

A digital workflow software is only as good as it is easy to implement. One of the biggest obstacles to adoption of new workflow systems is the reluctance to disrupt old patterns that are working. As Tim explains, however, implementing a system like ProcurePro is all about finding ways to integrate existing project management tools with new ones, rather than having to tear down existing processes. 

It is possible to integrate a construction management software like Procore within ProcurePro, for example, by directly embedding into the tendering or buyout functionality. This means the project teams can import project documentation and drawings directly from their source. Tim elaborates:

Connected systems help create the single source of truth that is so crucial to risk reduction.

Quick Access to Vendor Ratings and a Pricing Library in the Works

Subcontractor selection is often driven by cost, which is why giving project teams access to a pricing library is so valuable. It enables them to spot both opportunities and risks in the market pricing they’re seeing at any given moment. But cost isn’t the only factor that matters. A vendor’s past performance is equally critical in the decision-making process. Making that performance data available at the right moments not only supports better judgment calls but also delivers enormous benefits by reducing risk and improving project outcomes.

Having a vendor ratings system with a pricing library is an empowering tool:

Future Outlook

A vendor ratings system is one innovation among many that will reshape the buy-out phase of procurement as the current technology matures further. You’ve probably guessed it: AI will play an important role in future developments. Again, Tim stresses that new systems, even when they are empowered by AI, aren’t reinventing the wheel. Rather, they’re supercharging human professionals’ capabilities:

Project managers will still be in the driver’s seat of the buy-out process: they’ll just be driving much faster and much safer.

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