One Solution, Two Wins: How Surveyors Can Win More Bids and Protect Profit

Surveyors are all too familiar with the pressure of bidding. A tender arrives, the scope looks fair enough, but instinct says the price will need to be cut in order to stay ahead of the competition. You sharpen the pencil, trim down the fee, and hope you can deliver the work without eroding the margin. After all, it feels like if you don’t, someone else certainly will. 

It’s a pattern that has defined commercial surveying for years. Firms find themselves locked in a cycle of compromise: chasing growth by discounting, then scrambling to protect profit with the very same projects they worked hard to win. The real frustration, however, comes from the fact that everyone recognises the problem, but the alternatives have often felt limited. 

The good news is that the trade-off isn’t fixed. By digitising the survey workflow from site capture through to client-ready reporting, surveying businesses are rewriting the economics of their practice. They’re proving that you don’t have to choose between competitive pricing and healthy profit. You can win on both fronts.

The traditional workflow – manual capture, fragmented notes, endless formatting – keeps costs stubbornly fixed. Whether you charge £500 or £1,500 for a survey, the labour involved in producing the final report doesn’t change much. That’s why discounting feels so punishing: the work doesn’t flex with the fee. 

Digital reporting breaks this pattern. Capture is quicker, errors fall, reports compile themselves, and the same surveyor can deliver more instructions at the same time. The fixed-cost model starts to bend. Bidding aggressively is now a strategy, not a danger. 

Think of your delivery process as a pipeline. Every inefficiency is a leak, with hours lost and margin drained. GoReport plugs those leaks: 

• Labour efficiency: Surveyors spend less time transcribing notes and formatting reports, and more time on professional analysis.

• Consistency: Standardised templates prevent costly errors and reduce client pushback.

• Capacity: A leaner workflow means smaller teams can achieve output once reserved for larger ones.
   

When the leaks are sealed, more of every pound won stays in the business.

For years, surveyors have faced the same choice: cut fees to win work or hold firm and risk losing it. Every bid felt like a gamble. 

GoReport changes that equation. By digitising the process from site capture through to finished report, efficiency creates two wins at once: 

• Lower delivery costs. With structured forms and automated reporting, surveyors spend less time on admin and more time on professional work. Each project costs less to deliver, protecting margin.

• Stronger bids. A lower cost base means businesses can price more competitively without fear of eroding profit. What once felt like a risky discount becomes a confident growth strategy.
   

Instead of the old “either/or,” you get “both/and.” It changes the psychology of bidding from cautious (“Can we afford to win this job?”) to confident (“We can win it, and still make it pay”). Using GoReport goes beyond operational efficiency, instead acting as a lever for commercial advantage – is it one that you can afford to miss out on?

The results are real, and those using GoReport are proving it. 

Landview Surveyors: Since adopting GoReport, Landview has grown from four surveyors to 14, supported by four admin staff – more than 100% growth. Director David explains: “I can confidently say GoReport has been a pivotal part of our growth. Without it, we wouldn’t have been able to scale at the rate we have.” 

This experience demonstrates that efficiency is more than just saving time. It provides the structure required for rapid growth while maintaining quality and profitability. 

Home Surveys: For Aziz Rahman (MRICS, MCInstCES, MEWI), Building Surveyor at Home Surveys, GoReport cut report compilation time (including photos) by 60%. That freed up capacity to take on a major new client by creating a bespoke template, tripling weekly instructions from two to six. 

He said: “GoReport has not only supported my short-term goal of handling a larger workload but also aligned with my long-term vision of sustainable business growth without sacrificing quality or client service.”

Landview and Aziz may be different in scale, but the outcome is the same: digitisation delivers the “one solution, two wins” effect – growth and profitability working together, not against each other. 

To see the full impact, track a handful of simple measures: 

• Win rate before and after GoReport.
   

• Time from inspection to finished report.
   

• Hours per project (site, admin, QA).
   

• Number of revisions needed.
   

• Backlog speed (how quickly projects move from bid to completion).

The cost logic is straightforward: 

• Old way: hours × hourly rate.
   

• New way: fewer hours × the same rate.
   

Here’s a simple example: if a survey currently takes 20 hours and your fully loaded rate is £50/hour, the cost is £1,000. With GoReport, if that job takes 12 hours instead of 20, the cost drops to £600. That’s a saving of £400 per survey. 

From there, you’ve got options. Pass some of the saving on to clients to make your bids sharper, or keep more of it to increase your margin. Either way, the retained slice adds up fast across the year. Even at cautious volumes, the change is significant. 

Switching to digital reporting doesn’t need to be complicated. Most firms see results within about three months if they take it step by step. 

• Month one: test the waters. Pick one or two survey types where the admin is heavy and the pain is clear. Note how long each stage currently takes in terms of being on site, in admin, in QA, and in revisions. Build your templates, brief the team, and run five to ten real projects through the system.

• Month two: prove the value. Compare your results with the baseline. How many hours did you save? How much quicker were reports issued? Did clients notice an improvement? Use what you’ve learned to refine your templates and reporting process.

• Month three: roll it out. Expand to other teams or regions. Put simple dashboards in place to track turnaround times, margins, and workloads. And make sure your commercial team highlights the digital advantage in bids, because it’s a real differentiator.
   

A roadmap like this keeps adoption realistic, builds confidence step by step, and ensures the benefits are visible early enough to win buy-in across the whole business.

The old trade-off between winning bids and protecting profit is no longer inevitable. Businesses like Landview Surveyors and Home Surveys show that when reporting becomes digital, growth and margin can move together rather than pulling apart. Efficiency is no longer merely an operational fix, but a business advantage that shouldn’t be overlooked. 

The question for surveyors is simple: how long can you afford to keep competing the old way? 

If you’d like to see how this approach could work in your own practice, book a demo with GoReport and explore the gains for yourself.