The quote that nearly broke me

I quoted a project at a number that felt brave when I sent it and looked absurd six weeks later.

I finished it properly. It cost me money to do that, and I would do it again, but I want to be precise about what went wrong, because it was not a spreadsheet error.

What actually happened

I quoted on the description rather than the reality. The client described a process. The process they described was the tidy version — the one that exists in the induction pack, not the one that runs on a Wednesday when someone is off.

Every exception was a surprise. Not because the client hid anything, but because they had stopped seeing the exceptions as exceptions. To them it was just how it goes.

The fear underneath the number

I was afraid to go back and say the scope had changed, because I had priced it and it felt like admitting incompetence. So I absorbed it, and quietly resented it, and did worse work than I would have done if I had just spoken up in week two.

That is the actual failure. Not the estimate. The silence.

What changed

I do not quote a build without seeing the work happen now. Not described — happening. Sat next to someone while they do it, on a normal day, with the interruptions.

And if scope moves, I say so the week it moves, in writing, with what it means for time and money. Clients almost always take it well. It is the six-weeks-of-silence version they take badly, and rightly.