Too many tenderers, too short a period for tendering and poor quality documentation are the top complaints of Victorian builders when tendering for projects, according to a new survey.

According to the latest Master Builders Building Trends survey, 18.2 per cent of those surveyed believed that there are too many builders tendering tendering for the same project, 14.2 per cent believe that documentation is of poor quality and 9.7 per cent believe that tendering time is too short.

"Too little time to tender, poor documentation and more than around five tenderers leads to poor outcomes, possible litigation and - worst of all - the possible failure of the principal contractor," says Master Builders executive director, Brian Welch.

"Even when overwhelmed, principal contractors are often too frightened to reject tendering opportunities for fear of being removed from future processes. Consequently, producing a tender is seen as the best means of preserving a company's opportunities for another day."

Welch believes that the current lack of work has many builders scrambling for work, but at the same time, the "avalanche" of tendering work with the government stimulus package for schools is making an estimator's job extremely difficult.

Inconsistencies between tendering processes (8 per cent), contract negotiation post tender (8 per cent), short project delivery times (6.8 per cent ) and projects cancelled post tender without compensation (6.8 per cent) were also identified as challenges for Victorian builders.