Price and manage delivery risks — Culture & heritage

By the end of this lesson, you will be able to calculate a price, test its return and address a delivery risk.

Common to all countries

Build the cost before choosing the price

Start with quantities, paid time, third-party costs and delivery assumptions. Include mobilisation, supervision, compliance, warranty or support, overhead and the end of the contract where relevant. Separate fixed costs from costs that vary with usage. Forecast volumes are not minimum orders unless the contract makes that commitment.

In this exercise, target margin means profit divided by selling price. A 20% margin therefore requires price = cost ÷ 0.80. Adding 20% to cost is a markup and produces a lower margin. Taxes, discounting and financing are excluded from these teaching sums; add the applicable items to a real bid. Test one credible adverse scenario and decide who controls its cause and how the contract allocates it.

Worked example — Create a travelling exhibition

This is a fictional teaching case. Quantities, prices and contractual conditions below are assumptions for the exercise, not legal requirements or market benchmarks.

A lender changes a handling condition before shipment. The team must reassess packing, transport and insurance before committing. A transport quote alone does not prove that every leg and custody transfer is insured.

Item	Cost (currency units)
Curation and design	18,000
Displays and installation	22,000
Transport, rights and insurance	10,000
Total	50,000

Total cost is 50,000. To retain 20% of the selling price as profit, price is 50,000 ÷ 0.80 = 62,500. If “Revised packing and movement” adds 5,000 to cost without a price increase, profit becomes 7,500, or 12% of price. Preserving 20% would require 68,750, only where the procurement permits that price. A cost increase does not automatically entitle the supplier to a contract price increase.

Country specific — what to verify

Check heritage and cultural-property movement rules, artist contracting, customs where relevant, accessibility and funder conditions. Do not assume an artistic purchase automatically qualifies for an exception to competition. The legal form of a grant, prize, loan and services contract matters.

Loans, transport permissions and local cultural insurance. Use the destination-country module and the actual tender pack. The sources below are references with their own scope; they do not form a single worldwide regime. For the general method, revisit the foundations.

Put it into practice

Calculate the price for 20% of selling price as profit, then add 5,000 to cost. Calculate profit at the unchanged price and write one risk-control action.

Model answer

Total cost is 50,000. To retain 20% of the selling price as profit, price is 50,000 ÷ 0.80 = 62,500. If “Revised packing and movement” adds 5,000 to cost without a price increase, profit becomes 7,500, or 12% of price. Preserving 20% would require 68,750, only where the procurement permits that price. A cost increase does not automatically entitle the supplier to a contract price increase. A lender changes a handling condition before shipment. The team must reassess packing, transport and insurance before committing. A transport quote alone does not prove that every leg and custody transfer is insured.

Keep this worksheet in your working file. The quiz below checks the lesson’s decisions; passing it is neither a professional qualification nor a guarantee of an award.