The Bid Process

The bid process involves two parties: The general contractor, who puts together the bid packages and puts out the call for proposals, and the subcontractors, who submit bids.

This diagram is a graphical representation of the text in this topic.

While the application offers some flexibility in how you manage bids, this is the standard process for which it is optimized:

Bid Package Setup and Call for Proposals

  1. General Contractor: Adds a project in the application.

    The bid process starts with a project record. When you invite contractors to submit proposals, you can quickly add any contacts who are already associated with organization records.

  2. General Contractor: Sets up project files.

    Project files include much of the important information that subcontractors need to make informed bids.

  3. General Contractor: Creates a bid package.

    These bid packages represent contracts for different areas of work on the project.

    Each bid package corresponds to at least one discipline or trade. For example, if you have a project that involves building a house, you may have one bid package for rough carpentry, another for fire and smoke protection, and another for roofing. Preconstruction provides the flexibility to use multiple disciplines for one bid package, if necessary.

    When you create a bid package, you can set a due date, which determines how long potential bidders will have to submit their proposals.

  4. General Contractor: Adds potential bidders to a bid package.

    With a project and bid package set up, the general contractor can invite potential bidders who specialize in the trades covered by the bid packages.

    For example, on a bid package that covers tiling work, it would make sense to invite potential bidders whose specialty is tiling.

  5. General Contractor: Publishes the bid package.

    When a bid package is published, all of the potential bidders who were added to it receive an invitation to submit a proposal.

    The subcontractors can then use the application to submit their proposals, or the general contractor can enter proposal information on behalf of bidders who prefer to submit the proposals by some other means.

Bid Package Review

  1. Subcontractor: Registers their organization (if necessary).

    If a subcontractor is new to the Preconstruction application, they can set up a record for their organization the first time they navigate to it from their email invitation to bid.

  2. Subcontractor: Reviews the bid package.

Requests for Information (RFIs)

  1. Subcontractor: Submits RFIs (if necessary)

    If there are any questions about a contract, subcontractors can submit requests for information through the application.

  2. General Contractor: Responds to RFIs

    After receiving RFIs, general contractors can respond to them through the application.

Bid Submission, Review, and Award

  1. Subcontractor: Submits a bid.

    After a subcontractor has set up their organization record, and after they have sorted any necessary RFIs with the general contractor, they can submit a bid.

  2. General Contractor: Reviews bid.

    The general contractor can review proposals at any time, either as they come in or after the bid package due date has passed.

  3. General Contractor: Awards the job to a contractor.

    After reviewing all of the proposals, the general contractor can choose to award the bid package to a subcontractor.

  4. General Contractor: Closes the bid package.

    When a bid package no longer requires any edits, the general contractor can close it. This prevents any changes being made to it in the application.