As the teams reached the halfway point in the Preliminary Rounds, it is appropriate to reflect on how success can be measured. Teams at the top of the table, and battling for a place in the 12-team final at the end of the Preliminary Rounds will consider their position in the table a measure of how well they are running their business. Teams at the wrong end of the table will now look to success being able to turn round the fortunes of their companies, and this can only be achieved by focusing on the key areas that could improve their growth rates i.e., competitive bidding to secure new work, and managing their jobs in progress as profitably as possible, and close analysis of past performance will be important to prevent past mistakes from reocurring.

Period 8 proved to be a good one for the majority of the teams, with 80% posting positive growth figures. However for those that struggled this was largely down to winning new work, and there were a number of reasons for this. Where there are KNOWN rival bidders, their bidding history is available, and it is possible to assess the margins their rivals have bid with in the past, and formulate an effective bidding strategy to undercut them. However, this is not possible where their are UNKNOWN rival bidders, or even KNOWN rival bidders that are new to the Industry, such as The Crayford Road Group in period 8, who had no bidding history. In this scenario it is much harder to gauge a competitive margin to win work, and margins often have to be cut further to try and mitigate against being undercut.

As in the previous period, during period 8 there were 4 new entries into the top 12, and qualifying places for the Final. One of these was from a resurgent "Hatchico" (Hatch, Canada) who bounced back strongly from zero growth in the previous period with a 24% improvement that moved them back up to second. Even move impressive were "Jal Force" (Stantec, India) with a stunning 23% improvement that catapulted them 45 places up the table to 4th. At the top of the table the "CEPTIANS" (AtkinsRealis, India) were not able to maintain their grip at the top as they slipped back to 7th, to be replaced by "The Mighty Turtles" (Parsons, United States), who climbed one place after 13% growth that has enabled them to open up a 100 point gap from the chasing pack with 1,870 pts, and they are looking strong contenders to repeat the success of "It's Nothing Parsonal" back in 2021.