74 firms chase small school job

More than 70 contractors of all sizes have chased after a £3m school building in Kent as competition for work across the industry reaches fever pitch.

Council chiefs in Bexley were stunned when 74 expressions of interest flooded in for a relatively small contract to build a teaching block in Abbey Wood.

A council source said: "We are getting a huge response to anything published in the OJEU but this was still a massive amount of firms going after a job like this."

Contractors in the hunt for the Beeches Pupil Referral Unit included a raft of local specialists alongside some of the country's biggest names.

The chasing pack has now been whittled down to a shortlist of eight with tenders due to be returned on 15 July.

One Kent contractor said: "Competitive tendering is a brutal place to be at the moment with firms chasing after anything that comes up.

"Even the big boys that are doing most of their stuff through frameworks still have to get involved with work like this so you see a lot of household names on lists like these.

"I've never known so many people go after a job of this size but it looks like the way the industry is heading for the foreseeable future."

Fiercely competitive tender lists are becoming the norm all over the country as contractors chase a dwindling pool of work.

GB Building's commercial director in the Midlands Peter Stone said: "We don't want to become a business scrabbling for first-past-the-post tender races.

"You have to pursue some because of the present climate, but it gets you nowhere and is a very brutal market."

Willmott Dixon director Mark Tant said: "We have competitively tendered for some work this year, but it is a very, very competitive market. A large number of contractors are very hungry to win work. You have to wonder sometimes whether the bids they put in are above or below cost."