Bid pipeline velocity calculator

What bid pipeline velocity measures

Bid pipeline velocity is the revenue your estimating pipeline turns out per day. It rolls four numbers a contractor already tracks into one figure you can watch week over week: how many bids are active, how often you win them, what a won job is worth, and how long a bid takes to turn into an award. When any one of those moves, velocity moves, so it is a fast read on whether the pipeline is getting healthier or just busier.

The formula

Velocity = (active bids x hit ratio x average contract value) / bid cycle days. Worked example with common planning figures: 8 active bids at a 15 percent hit ratio, 250,000 dollars average contract value, on a 21 day bid cycle. That is 8 x 0.15 x 250,000 = 300,000 dollars of expected award value, divided by 21 days = about 14,285.71 dollars of revenue per day. The expected value part (300,000) is what the active bids are worth once you apply the hit ratio; dividing by the cycle turns it into a daily rate you can compare against a target.

What is a good bid hit ratio

Hit ratio is bids won divided by bids submitted. As a planning convention, general-contractor hard-bid work commonly runs 10 to 25 percent, and negotiated or design-build work runs higher because there is less competition per opportunity. These are conventions to start from, not a quote for your market; your own historical win rate by job type is the number to trust. The calculator ships 15 percent as an overridable default so you can replace it with yours.

Bid more jobs, or bid better jobs

The velocity formula makes the trade-off explicit. Doubling active bids doubles velocity only if the hit ratio and cycle time hold, and they rarely do: chasing more bids with the same estimating capacity tends to drop the hit ratio (rushed, thinner bids) and stretch the cycle. Raising the hit ratio is pure leverage because it lifts velocity without adding a single bid. Raising the hit ratio from 15 to 20 percent lifts velocity by exactly 4/3, a 33 percent gain, with the same pipeline and the same cycle. For most estimating teams the win is better bids on the right jobs, not more bids on everything.

Revenue won per estimating hour

The optional estimating-hours input answers a sharper question: what is an hour at the takeoff table worth. Revenue won per estimating hour = hit ratio x average contract value / estimating hours per bid. It is the expected won value of a single bid divided by the hours it took to produce, so it is independent of how many bids you run or how long the cycle is. Worked example: at a 20 percent hit ratio, a 250,000 dollar average contract, and 40 estimating hours per bid, each estimating hour is worth 0.20 x 250,000 / 40 = 1,250 dollars of expected won revenue. Cutting the hours per bid raises that number directly, which is why estimating throughput is a revenue lever, not just a cost line.

How to shorten the bid cycle

Bid cycle days sit in the denominator, so shortening the cycle raises velocity without touching win rate or contract size. The cycle is mostly takeoff and pricing time: measuring quantities off the plans, matching them to a price book, and assembling the proposal. That is the slow, manual part, and it is where more bids per estimator comes from without hiring more estimators. Ruh reads the plan set, produces the quantity takeoff, and drafts a priced estimate against your own price book, so an estimator turns bids faster and the hit ratio holds because the numbers are traceable to the sheet they came from. See the construction estimating software page for how it works.