Do Architects Get Paid for Tender Stage Work? What the Fee Actually Covers

Yes, tender stage work is normally paid. Under both AIA and RIBA appointments, taking a project out to tender sits inside the architect’s basic services and is covered by the agreed fee, usually around five percent of it. What is rarely paid is the work a practice does to win the commission in the first place.

Most of the confusion comes from the phrase itself. Two different activities share the same label, and only one of them appears in a signed appointment. Separating them is the quickest way to find out whether you are billing correctly.

What Counts as Tender Stage Work?

Tender stage work is everything an architect does to take a completed design to market and turn contractor prices into a signed building contract. In practice that means assembling the tender package, issuing it to an agreed bidder list, answering technical queries, releasing addenda, reviewing returned prices, and reporting to the client with a recommendation.

The second meaning is almost the opposite. Practices also describe themselves as being at tender stage when they are the ones bidding, competing on fee and credentials for a commission they do not yet hold. That effort carries no appointment, no defined scope and, in most cases, no payment.

Why Tendering Sits Inside Your Basic Services

In the United States, AIA Document B101-2017 divides basic services into five phases: schematic design, design development, construction documents, procurement, and construction. Procurement, which the 2017 edition renamed from bidding and negotiation, is a basic service rather than an extra. If your fee is a stipulated sum or a percentage of the construction budget, tendering is already inside it.

The UK reaches the same answer by a different route. The RIBA Plan of Work 2020 is procurement neutral, so tendering is not a stage at all. It runs as a task bar across the stages, and under traditional procurement the package usually goes to market at the end of Stage 4, Technical Design. Our breakdown of the RIBA work stages sets out what each one is expected to deliver.

How the Fee Splits Across Project Phases

The table below shows the allocation most commonly used across US practice. Exact percentages move with firm, project type and procurement route, but the shape holds.

Two things stand out. Construction documents carry the heaviest share, which means the drawings and specifications that make up the tender set are already paid for before anything reaches a bidder. The tender phase itself is the thinnest slice on the list.

How Much of the Architect Fee Percentage Covers Tendering?

Less than most people assume, and that is where practices get caught. The overall architect fee percentage on a building project commonly falls between five and fifteen percent of construction cost, as our guide to calculating an architectural fee sets out. Take five percent of that total for procurement and the tender phase on a medium project can work out at only a handful of budgeted days.

The work does not always cooperate with the allocation. A tender that attracts fifty technical queries, a bidder that withdraws in the final week, or a client who decides to retender after prices come back high will each consume time the five percent never anticipated.

When Tender Stage Work Goes Unpaid

The unpaid version happens before an appointment exists. Fee proposals, prequalification questionnaires, framework applications and the concept sketches that clients increasingly expect alongside a bid are all produced at the practice’s own cost. With a typical tender list running to four or six bidders, most of that effort is written off by design.

Design competitions extend the same logic. A full design package is exchanged for exposure rather than a fee, a pattern examined in Designing Procurement: The Case for Competitions, published by Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies in 2025. Entering can still be the right call, and our roundup of architecture competitions worth joining covers how to judge that, but it should be treated as marketing spend rather than billable work.

How to Protect the Fee Before Documents Go Out

The appointment is the only place this gets fixed, and the language needed is short. Four clauses cover most of the exposure:

• State how many tender packages and how many tender rounds the fee includes
• Make any retender, whether triggered by cost, scope or a failed process, an additional service billed hourly
• Set a limit on contractor queries, above which further responses are charged at an agreed rate
• Add an abortive work clause so time is recoverable if the client pauses or cancels after documents are issued

Agreeing the bidder list length before issue matters just as much. Every extra tenderer adds duplicate queries, duplicate addenda distribution and duplicate price analysis, none of which is reflected in a fixed procurement percentage.

What This Means for Your Next Project

Your Next Step: Open the appointment on your current live project and find the clause that describes tendering. If it does not name a number of tender rounds or say what happens on a retender, add that language to your standard template before the next fee proposal goes out.

Fee percentages and phase allocations quoted here are typical industry figures and vary by region, project type and appointment. Contract terms should be checked against your own agreement and, where the sums are significant, with a legal adviser.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is tender stage work included in an architect’s basic services?

In standard appointments, yes. AIA B101-2017 lists procurement as one of five basic service phases, and RIBA appointments include tender activity as a named deliverable within the technical design and construction stages. Unless your agreement carves it out, the fee already covers it.

Do architects get paid extra if a project is retendered?

Only if the appointment says so. Retendering is usually treated as an additional service, but the wording has to exist before it happens. Where the retender follows a bid that exceeded the client’s budget, AIA B101-2017 can place the redesign back on the architect at no extra fee.

Are architects paid for preparing a fee bid or competition entry?

Normally not. Bidding for a commission is speculative work carried out at the practice’s own expense. Some invited competitions and public design contests offer honoraria to shortlisted teams, but open competitions rarely pay anything below the prize tier.

How long should the tender period take?

Four to six weeks is common for a mid-size building project, longer for complex or public work. The architect’s own input is heaviest in the first and last weeks, issuing the package and analysing returned prices, with query handling spread across the middle.