About 10 years ago, I took up ceramics. The first class I took at one of the country's premier institutions, Philadelphia's The Clay Studio, host to the upcoming NCECA conference, was a hand-building course. I learned all sorts of techniques for creating pots, and the one I loved the most was using slabs of clay. Eventually, I began making tiles.
To make a slab, you flatten a chunk of clay to a desired thickness, using either a slab roller or a rolling pin, the same type more commonly used in kitchens to make dough. Because I'd done some woodworking earlier in my life, I gravitated to slabs because it's possible to create similar kinds of pieces using both media. However, the trickiest thing for me about slabs was reminding myself that this smooth, evenly thick material wasn't wood. ...
Interesting take. In my opinion, the bidding structure itself is not necessarily the problem, but perhaps a key enabler of it. Afterall, the bidding process creates a market of buyers and that often is in the properties/sellers best interest. The bigger problem seems to be that bidding many times (but not all) results in generic, one size fits all proposals if it is considered to be the end all, be all of the sales cycle. That isn't in the interest of either buyer or seller.