Transcript:

Welcome to the Planet Bid Spec Library and Calendar training.

Here we're going to use Nessa County as an example.

On the left-hand side, we're going to talk about the Bid Spec Library and Calendar.

Bid Spec Library is going to show you all the bids going on for every single Planet Bids agency, so long as the bid is not in one of the draft modes.

I'm going to clear this message here.

So here we can see which agency is hosting the bids, their project title, invitation, the due date, the stage, the bid type, and the format the vendor is going to be turning it in by.

We can search by keyword, categories, agency, state, cooperative language, piggybackable language.

By default, we are excluding your bids, but you can add them then.

And then over here at the top, we can click on the plus to add different things to sort by.

So maybe I'm only interested in a particular stage or type of RFX due date range.

Here in this example, I'm going to search by HVAC and maybe it's year end, we're super busy.

So let's look for anything with a piggybackable.

Save yourself some time.

We're going to do a quick search.

It's going to be searching category codes, bid titles, line items, common keyword areas.

If it returns anything, we're going to see those results here.

So let's take a look at this one here with the City of Santa Barbara.

When we open it up, it is going to remind me which agency we're looking at.

And we can see how they set up their bid.

We can see what category codes they use.

we can export their notified lists of vendors.

If we need to reach out to Jennifer over at the city and ask her some questions about our bid we can we can do so.

The line items we will see how they set up their line items for their bid and if you like it you do have the ability to export it, clean that export up just a tiny bit and import it into your own bid.

The documents you'll be to see any of their documents whether they've marked in private or public.

This will allow you to search the documents to make sure it has the right piggybackable clause for you, but also to take advantage of how they may be wording their bids and take advantage and borrow from each other.

Perspective bidders list who were their interested parties and you can export this list as well.

And then if they had any released questions you will be able to see the question and how they answered it as well as any addendas they've issued.

This will allow you to also look at the types of questions and answer and addendas they had to issue out so when you're building your own bid specs you can make sure you're addressing those as well.

Now this particular bid that I had a piggybackable cost and I'm interested in the award information. What kind of pricing did they get and who did they award to?

You'll notice up here we don't see the bid results or the awards tab, so we're going to go back to the first tab here, Bid Information, and we're going to scroll all the way down to the bottom.

So long as this bid was not by invitation only, but they haven't archived the bid, we can then click on this link and go to the public side of this project.

Here, depending on whether or not the agency has released the bid results and the award information, we'll be able to come in here and take a look at the information, drill in, look at the pricing if it was released by that agency, and then look at who they awarded to.

We can then reach out to the agency or to the vendor and ask for that contract and take advantage of another person's bid. Let them do the work for you.

All right, Let's go back into the system real quick from your point of view.

So that's the BID spec library.

It's a really great resource tool to see how other agencies are wording certain BIDs, certain terminologies that are out there, help brand new buyers learn the roles and learn the different processes that they need to do in pushing BIDs out and managing it through the process.

Here, we're gonna take a look at calendar.

So we've done some research.

We have to go back out to BID.

We've gotten some good information from other agencies on how we want to word the doc, but before we go out to bid, we want to make sure we're going to get really good participation.

So I'm going to hit calendar.

Calendar is going to by default show you what's going on for your agency. So here with NASA County, we can see on the 17th, they've got three bid closing.

And if we click on it, we can see which buyer, so it's all Thomas's work.

We can see what time their closing and what projects they are for.

If I were to click on one, it's going to go ahead and open up.

If I click this little icon here, I can add it to my Google or Outlook calendar so I can follow along. But I want to know about other agencies around me.

So I have the ability to sort by event. Users would be sorting my own bids, my own agency, department, my own department.

But here I'm interested in maybe all participating agencies.

Maybe I'm doing a bid for something like elevators, where there's a set number of vendors in the United States that work on elevators.

Maybe specific agencies.

If I select specific agencies, I can click on agencies and then go through the list.

You can come up here and search and select.

You can go just down the list and start to select as well.

I'm just going to go down the list, just to make it easy here, I'm going to hit save, and apply.

And now I can see the bids from those agencies, and the nice thing about it is if I were thinking about having a pre-bid meeting on the 25th, for instance, I can see here that the city Fort Myers has one, and it's their Riverside public boat ramp.

If I'm going to be doing a bid of similar, I might be competing for the same set of vendors.

In this case, I can select it, go to look at their list of prospective bidders. They don't have any prospective bidders yet.

It just hit the street, but if they did, I would be able to see and compare.

Let's go look at a agencies at this time.

So again, I can pick any particular date and see what's going on.

And again, if I'm going to do something similar, I can pick a different date and time so I get good participation in my bid.

This way, vendors, if this bid has been out there a lot longer than mine has, I can change the date and vendors who have already registered to go to this previous meeting can now also make it to mine.

And, City of Toledo, if I'm interested in bid, I can add it to my Google Calendar as well and follow along.

So both the VIN spec library and the calendar section will help you prep for your bids before you post them.

Admin Training

Creating and Posting a Bid

Managing and Awarding a Bid

Bid Spec Library and Calendar (Video)