An importer who has only done stock orders treats a tender like a bigger version of the same thing. It is not. A project order is judged on a schedule and a stack of documents as much as on the furniture itself, and the places it goes wrong are the steps that never appear on a stock PO. Having shipped a fair number of workstation and executive seating projects, here is where the money and the time actually go.
The workflow is longer than "order and ship"
A typical project runs through nine phases: specify, source, quote, approve, purchase, track, deliver, install and handover. Stock buyers live in two of those — purchase and deliver. A tender lives in all nine, and the front end is where it is won or lost. The specification has to be answered line by line, the quote has to map to it exactly without "or similar" fudges, and many tenders demand evidence of a similar contract delivered before — so a first-time project bidder without a reference job is already at a disadvantage no price can fix. The way around it is to start with a smaller framework or a single-floor job, deliver it cleanly, and use that as the reference for the larger tender next time — trying to win a flagship project as your first ever is the hardest possible entry, and the evaluators know it.
Phased delivery and site readiness
The detail importers underestimate most is that a project rarely takes everything at once. The site is built floor by floor, so the contract calls for phased delivery against a schedule — chairs for floors three and four in week one, the workstations a fortnight later when the carpet is down. That means storage, sequencing, and a real risk in both directions: deliver early and the goods sit in a wet, dusty shell with no security; deliver late and you are the reason the handover slips and you wear the penalty. The container plan has to serve the install programme, not just the cheapest single shipment, and those two goals often pull against each other. We have had projects where consolidating into one full container would have saved real freight but missed the floor-by-floor sequence, so we split the load and ate a little cost to keep the programme — because being the supplier who held up handover is more expensive than the freight ever was. Running a pre-shipment inspection on each phase before it loads is the step that catches a systematic fault while there are still floors left to correct it.
Installation, snagging and handover
Then the part that is not manufacturing at all. Public and corporate tenders usually want the furniture delivered, installed and commissioned, followed by a snagging walk where the client lists every scratched top and missing grommet, and a handover sign-off that releases your payment. Whoever owns installation owns the snag list. The trade-off is concrete: handle install through a local partner and you control the handover but carry the coordination and the cost; supply furniture only and hand install to the main contractor, and you are cheaper to quote but at the mercy of someone else's snag standards for your retention money. Decide which side of that line you are on before you bid, not after you have won.
Retention, defects liability and the long tail
The part that surprises first-time project bidders is that the job is not over at handover. Most tenders hold retention — commonly a percentage of the contract value kept back for a defects-liability period that can run six to twelve months — and release it only after the client is satisfied nothing has failed. That changes the maths on a thin margin: a job that looked profitable can sit cash-negative while the retention is held, and a wave of warranty calls in that window eats it. So we build the units to last the defects period without drama and keep spares of the wear parts — casters, runners, grommets, a panel or two — set aside against that order, because a fast replacement in month four protects your retention better than any argument about whose fault it was.
The documents a bid actually needs
Tenders check paperwork an e-commerce order never asks for: test reports against the named standard, material and fire certificates, sometimes environmental and chain-of-custody declarations, and that similar-contract proof. The mistake is treating these as an afterthought — a strong price with a missing fire certificate still loses. We build to BIFMA and EN methods and arrange testing per order so the report matches the units you are bidding; we do not hand over a generic certificate that an evaluator will reject on sight.
Tell us the tender's spec, the delivery programme and what install scope you are taking, and we will map a realistic schedule and the document set against it rather than promising a date we both know is optimistic. Our companion notes on desk testing and the OEM/ODM workflow cover where those reports come from. Background on the factory and its export history is on our about page; start the conversation through our contact form or [email protected].