Background
A regional heavy civil contractor working predominantly on state DOT projects engaged Advastar after two years of declining win rates. The firm had historically been successful on roadway and bridge work but had watched its hit rate fall while bid volume stayed constant, eroding backlog and creating pressure on equipment utilization.
The Challenge
Leadership had treated the decline as an estimating accuracy problem and had spent eighteen months adjusting markup and reviewing unit prices without effect. The underlying issue was structural. Preconstruction had no executive owner, bid strategy was decided informally between the president and whoever was available, and there was no systematic review of why bids were lost. Compounding the risk, the firm’s chief estimator was within a few years of retirement and no successor had been identified, so a leadership hire risked being followed immediately by a second vacancy.
The Solution
Advastar recommended treating the search as a leadership appointment rather than an estimating hire, which required a frank conversation with the president about where accountability for win rate actually sat. We recruited a vice president of preconstruction from a larger competitor in an adjacent state, prioritizing candidates who had built a pursuit process rather than only priced work well. In the same engagement we mapped chief estimator succession so that the retirement would not create a second gap, identifying two internal candidates and one external option. References were taken from owners and subcontractors as well as former employers, since a preconstruction executive’s standing with those parties directly affects coverage and pricing.
The Outcome
Bid hit rate recovered over the following four quarters as pursuit selection became deliberate rather than opportunistic. The firm now conducts a structured review of every lost bid, which was introduced by the new executive in his first month. One of the identified internal candidates has moved into a senior estimating role as part of the mapped succession.