Challenge:
Unfortunately, we’re all humans, meaning none of us are “Superheroes” and we get sick, injured or have emergencies that prevent us from working 24/7, 365 days a year. So, if you’re a general contractor and you’ve been working on a construction project for a couple of weeks and you’re ready to bid the project, but then on bid day you get sick, you need to have someone else ready to step in. If you haven’t been thoroughly tracking your invitation to bid data, then the person who is responsible to bid the project for you, while you’re out sick, is going to run into bottlenecks, costly delays, and may even lose the project.
Analysis:
It’s important to make sure you’re being held accountable and keeping track of all the bidding history that is relevant to the project. So, if you’re not there on bid day, someone else can easily take over and put together a good, collective bid and submit the project proposal. Discover below the type of data that should be continuously tracked and logged within your company during the bid management phase to ensure a qualified bid can be sent out on the due date, no matter who is sending it.
Solution:
Every general contractor should track their bid management communications and processes on a project. Document your project on a yellow tablet, a piece of paper, an excel sheet, or, preferably, an invitation to bid software. What bidding data is most important to track?
- Construction Project Profile – including all participants, trade codes, project files, bid due date, general requirements and conditions, and budget
- Communications – all invitations to bid that have been sent to your selected subs and the stats regarding them I.e. if they have opened, replied, need more information, need to be followed up with, need to updated call list information
- Subcontractor Documentation – certifications, licenses, contact information, estimates, contracts, proposals
- Progress of Bids – all relevant bid data, bid calculations/comparisons, subs who have followed up/submitted the bid, bid proposals, awarded subs
In the end it’s important the above information should be recorded during the preconstruction phase, so that your company can guarantee a qualified bid on bid day, no matter the circumstances.
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