About Bidding

Owners, general contractors and other industry participants go through a bidding process to purchase goods and services associated with the development and construction of capital projects. e-Builder's Bidding module helps manage this bidding process and streamlines the exchange of documents, drawings and communications that surround it.

Without an online system, the typical bid process involves the distribution of plans and specifications to multiple bidders by hand delivery or express mail, which is expensive and very difficult to coordinate and manage. Though the bidding process itself is fast paced, it involves multiple back and forth exchanges, and requires that each step in the process be documented to minimize liability or misunderstandings later on. The communication process is difficult to manage, prone to errors, and labor intensive. To save time and money, bid managers often invite a smaller number of bidders or send partial information to bidders. At best, this results in less competitive bid results. At worst, this results in lost work, lawsuits, or projects that are not profitable because incorrect vendors were selected.

The e-Builder Bidding module is ideal for owners and general contractors or companies that operate in that capacity (e.g., third party program management companies).

This module provides the following benefits:

  • Improved bid coverage which leads to more competitive pricing
  • Streamlined exchanges of information such as plans and specifications between the bid manager and invited bidders. The bidders can access the Bidder's Portal and communicate directly with the bid manager.
  • More efficient communications with automatic message and status tracking
  • Cost reduction (i.e., shipping, printing, resources)
  • Reduction in the time and effort associated with tracking and managing the entire bidding process
  • Process standardization which increases efficiency and eliminates errors
  • Easier access to historical data to improve future projects
  • Increased competitive advantage with a more streamlined process

The following concepts are used within e-Builder:

  • Project: To begin the bid process you must first create a project. Each real world project that your organization is participating in must be associated with a project in e-Builder. Your Project Administrator or Manager will be able to add you as a member of a project in e-Builder if you are working on it.
  • Contact: To invite a bidder to one or more of your projects, you must have the bidder created as a contact first. Each contact invited must have a fax and/or email address.

    A contact is different from a standard e-Builder user. An e-Builder user is someone that has been added to the e-Builder account as a participant to a set of your projects. An e-Builder contact has a record of contact information (e.g. phone number, fax, email address, street address, etc.) associated with an e-Builder company. These contacts do not have access to all of your e-Builder project information; but can access only the project bid information that the contact is invited to. For every contact that is invited to bid, there will be a historical record of their participation in the contact details.

  • Company: Each e-Builder contact is associated with an e-Builder company. There can be more than one contact associated with a company but only one company can be associated with a contact. Each contact can be an Invited Bidder and there can be more than one contact associated with a company that has been invited to bid. For every contact associated with a company that is invited to bid on a project there will be a historical record of their participation in the company details.

Typically, there are three steps in the bidding process:

  1. Analyze the Bids: Once the responses are submitted, the bid contact is notified. The bid contact can then review each submitted response and determine the best qualified bidder for the job. The e-Builder Bidding module updates the details of each invited bidder real-time when their status and/or responses are updated or submitted.
  2. Award the Project to the Winning Bidders: Once the winning bidder has been determined, the bidding manager has the option to send a notification to the winner and/or losing bidders. For each contact invited to bid, e-Builder will keep track of their bidding history, such as the communications exchanged, whether they were awarded on their jobs, their statuses, etc.
  3. Close the Project: After awarding the bidders you can close the project and begin executing the work.

The Bidding Process Using e-Builder

bidding-process

You can access the Bidding module of e-Builder using either of the following methods.

  1. From the top navigation tabs, click the Bidding tab.

    Use this method if you are not already working in a project.

    2. Bidding Tab Global Nav Bar
  2. On the Bidding page, choose a project from the All Projects menu.

    The Bid Packages page is displayed.

  3. Click the name of a bid package to view the Bid Package Details page.
  • Click the Project Bidding link.

    • The Bid Packages page with a list of bid packages for the current project is displayed.

    Project Menu Bidding Link