Creating and Posting a Bid (Video)

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Transcript:

Welcome to the Plan of Bids, Creating and Posting a Bid Training Video.
Before we begin in Bid Management, we're going to talk about the Help Center really quickly here.
In the Help Center, you will find the user guides for the modules that you have purchased.
When I go into Bid Management, in all the user guides, you can search for a keyword up here at the top, and it will take you to the sections that contain the keyword.
but I want to point out creating and maintaining a bid.
In here in the beginning, you're going to see our four templates.
And below that is going to differentiate the differences between those different templates.
Please note, you can pick whichever template best fits your needs.
If you're doing a general bid, but like the public works template, go for it.
Pick whichever template you like.
vendors will never know which template you've picked.
What we're saying with the names is that it lends itself best towards Public Works, but you don't necessarily need to use it. All right, let's go back into the system.
We're going to go back to bid management.
When you go into bid management, by default it's going to show you all the bids that you have created.
If you need to see Everybody's been you'll see up here where it says buyer. There's a blue circle click on the blue circle.
So it's now a box Unhits search.
It's now every user at your agency If you click within the buyer box, then you can select specific people You can search your bits by keywords stage types as well as clicking the X the plus to add additional things that you wish to search by Anything that is in blue lets you know that it is a by invitation only bid, and only the vendors that you have selected will be able to log in and view the project.
To start our bid, we're going to click the gavel up at the top.
There are four templates that you'll be able to pick from unless you're using bid advertisement.
That is a separate training.
The quick quote. The reason we call it quick quote is because that's all you can do is a quote.
And we call it quick because when it comes to line items, you can do 30 line items or less.
And as we scroll down, you can see it's a very short form. It's not a whole lot to fill out.
The general.
The general will allow you to do any type of that RFX from a bid, RFI, RFP, RFQ for quote, and RFQAL for qualification.
It is unlimited line items and it's almost the complete form.
We're not going to see in here a place to display bonding requirements, but as you can see there's quite a lot to go room. Don't worry, you don't have to fill it all out.
The professional services template, you can do everything but a quote.
It is unlimited line items and it is the full form.
So here you're going to see everything including a place to display the bonding requirements. Let me go back up to the top real quick.
Under response format, you will see line items.
If you are doing anything where it is an RFI, RFP, RFQAL. You will have response file and cost file.
Response file is either the proposal or the qualification document. If you select it, it becomes mandatory.
Sometimes when we do RFPs, we want cost in a separate sealed envelope.
If that is the case, you are going to go ahead and select cost file.
Vendors submitting electronically will now have two different areas in which to put an attachment.
The proposal or response file will be open the second the bid closes.
You'll be able to access it.
The cost file, if selected, will continue to be locked from you once the project closes until you tell the system it is now time to unlock it.
We will record who and when the unlock occurred.
If you have advanced debidding for Public Works, you will see the subcontractor option and the bid bond option on the Public Works template and the professional services template.
Public Works.
You cannot do an RFI, RFP, RFQAL, but it is unlimited line items.
And it is the complete form.
Now let's talk about the differences in line items.
The QuickQuote, General, and Professional services all use the same line item grid.
So once you select line items and you click on line items up at the top, you'll now see the grid.
All four templates will always include item code, type, description, unit of measure, quantity, and reference.
Out of those, only the description, unit of measure, and quantity are required.
On the quick quote general professional services template, you will see the columns for manufacturer, model number, brand requirements, you can select if that's going to be sold brand equivalent, no preference, what the brands are, and if in admin for bid management, you have created library of delivery locations you can save per line where that item should be delivered to.
On the Public Works template when you have line items again you'll see the item code, type, description, unit of measure, quantity, and reference.
But after that you will see only one additional column and that is for unit price.
I'm going to hover my mouse over the first line and Click the green arrows, either the top or the bottom.
It will insert a line in that location.
We're gonna put in for line four that we need an allowance.
And that allowance amount, we're gonna go ahead and set it to $10 ,000.
Once I post this bid, my bidders will be able to enter in pricing for lines one, two, and three.
Line four has been set and will automatically become part of their bid, and they will not be able to alter it.
This is where the Public Works template may help for other types of projects, like printing.
You're printing a newspaper and need to ask the question, how many pages per parent sheet? That's a numeric value answer, but it's not a cost answer.
All right, let's go ahead and get started.
In this example, we're going to use the Public Works template.
And really, once you know how to do one template, you know how to do them all. So here, I'm going to go ahead and select Public Works.
Up at the top right-hand corner, you'll notice that Save Bid is grayed out.
All you need to save your project is a title.
So here, in this example, we're going to build an office for Planet Bids.
You'll notice that now that I have a title, the Save is active and my project stage is draft. I can save this and come back and keep working on it.
Before I do anything, I'm going to change my project stage from draft to bidding.
We'll come back and talk about the other stages in a minute. Right now all I have is a title.
Let's go out to bid.
Whenever you go into bidding or planning stage, the system is going to do validations to make sure that everything our system needs in order to work effectively has been created.
You'll notice we don't ask for a whole lot.
If you're in bidding stage, we obviously need a due date.
Planning does not.
Planning is a heads up to your vendor community.
This is what we have so far.
We're open to questions.
If you have questions turned on, here's our documents.
Go ahead and download them.
But we're not accepting offers at this time.
If you're doing a bid or a quote, you must have at least one line item.
RFIs, RFPs, RFQALs do not need line items, but will need a response file. Format. How do we want the vendors to submit their offer?
Electronic only, meaning they must submit through the system.
Paper only, they must submit that hard copy directly to you. Or electronic and paper, which is vendor's choice.
And then you must select least one category code so we know who to reach out to.
Everything else that you're going to see will be completely optional.
All right, let's go ahead and go right back to draft. Invitation number.
If you have an invitation number, you can come in here and select it. It can be alpha, numeric, and contains symbols.
The due date.
There are three ways to put due dates into each one of our due date fields. One, you can simply start to type it in or select from the calendar.
Here I've selected or I could type it.
Now once you've selected the date off the calendar, notice that the hour below is highlighted.
I can come in here and simply type in on my keyboard a six and hit the tab on my keyboard to move to the next cell.
Then I move again and hit A for AMP for PM. Once I've set the time and I click away the time is now set.
We'll talk about the third way which is the scheduler in just a minute. Project stage. Draft is a draft.
You might have users set up where they need to get approval first.
If that's the case, once they've set everything up, they can come in here and select needs approval and their list of approvers will show up.
They can select from their list and once they select it and hit save, the approver will be notified via email.
The approver can come in and review it and decide there needs to be changes.
We'll talk about that a little later on.
Reference ID, internal use only.
There are going to be five areas where we might see internal use only depending on what we're doing.
So reference ID here is allowing you to connect multiple bids together so that you can search for them later and bring them all up in your search results.
For instance, maybe you're building a stadium. The stadium is going to have multiple different bid packages.
You can put in the stadium name, perhaps a bond measure, a project manager's name, and later on search for that and it's going to bring up every bid where that data falls into this field.
Project type. Because we're doing public works, we can do a bid, a quote, or informal public work.
Response format. How do we want the vendors to submit their offer?
Electronic only.
They must submit through the system and you'll notice a box that says notes displayed in eBidding.
If I do paper only that box disappears and if I do electronic and paper then the box is back. This field here is courtesy only.
You do not have to use it and if you use it please remember that only the vendors who are bidding electronically will see it and the only time they see it is when they're actually submitting their bid.
This is a great place to remind your vendors to sign their documents and it will expand as you need it. Response types. What do we want the vendors to submit to us?
Line items. If you're doing a bid or a quote you must have at least one line item.
General attachments. What other documents do we need the vendors to submit?
If you have advanced e-bidding for Public Works then you can select subcontractors and vendor community will either have to say no subs or list at least one subcontractor on the bid.
Bid bond. Do you require a bid bond?
If you have advanced e-bidding this will allow the vendor to say in lieu of a bid bond I'm going to be turning in a cashier's check or vice versa.
You can control whether or not you will accept a cashier's check by going into admin to bid management settings and turning that on or off.
More on bid bonds when we go to submit as a vendor.
So here I've asked my vendors. They are going to complete the line items.
They're going to complete the subcontractor form and give me their bid bond information.
On top of that, I may have some other documents I wish them to submit.
Here if I select add, Each time I select add, a new attachment field will appear, and I can label this whatever I need to label it, and I can mark it required or optional.
The subcontractor is a form that they will fill out online, does not allow for attachments.
Bid bond will allow for one attachment and it is mandatory.
Any additional documents you will use general attachments for.
If you do not have any bidbond turned on or any general attachments, all you have is line items and there will not be a place for the vendors to submit a document, so always make sure you have at least one area for your vendors to submit an attachment.
Type of award.
If you're using the Public Works template or any of the other templates and you have no line items, the type of award will be labeled lump sum.
If you have line items using any template other than Public Works, you will be able to change it to split.
This is the only thing we must define. This is going to tell our system how to lay out the award information.
More about that in another training. Categories.
Who do we want to reach out to? You must select at least one category code.
In this case, being my demo site, I want to pick a bracelet, but if it was an office that I was building for real, I might type in construction and see all of the construction codes and select anyone that I want to select. You can select as multiple codes as you need.
Once you have selected your category codes, vendor notification is going to expand.
Here are the five categories that I selected up above and based on that the system found 153 vendors registered with my agency and this is a little window within your bit where you can see all 153 vendors.
Because this is a Public Works bid, on the Public Works template we will have the contractor license area here.
If I come in and select a contractor license type, this will be based off your agency's configuration.
Once I select it, notice that the number of vendors went down to 19.
This is saying the vendors that we're going to outreach to must have at least one of the category codes we pick well as one of the contractor licenses.
If I select inclusive, notice that our number greatly expanded. Now it's saying they must have at least one or the other.
Vendor types is all of your classifications ethnicity and gender.
And then you have country, state, city, and zip code.
Everything here on this right-hand side and vendor types will narrow it down.
Local will be based upon any local zip codes you've provided to plan a bid.
If I were to post this bid right now, this is what we call a public bid. Everybody notified will be.
If I were to post this bid right now, everybody in the list of vendors, 187, will be notified and anybody else coming to my agency's website and looking at the bid opportunities we'll be able to view and participate in this project.
Now we're going to do a by invitation only bid.
I'm going to go ahead and select by invitation only and notice now it looks a little bit different down here at the bottom and here if I select an individual vendor they move over to the right hand side.
Only the two vendors that have moved to the right will be notified of this project and in order for them to see it they will have to log in.
Anybody on the left hand side if they log in they'll never see it nor will they be notified.
When doing a search for your vendor you can come in here and type in the vendor's name and if they exist you can add them.
Here you can see that AVOCO is listed twice.
If I select the first one and somebody from AVOCO logs in using the name and password associated with the second profile, they will not see it.
By invitation only is profile specific.
If you do not care whom at that company participates, please select all.
Also, if you're looking for a particular vendor, you know they've registered, but perhaps they didn't pick any of the category codes you're searching by.
You can hit clear search and that's going to bring your entire vendor database.
It doesn't change the category codes the bid is tied to, so you can do reporting under those codes, but now it allows you to search your entire vendor database.
Also, you'll notice the categories here were cleared. I can come in here and do a search by one of my groups.
So if I have created a group for a plan room, I can select it.
Maybe I've created a group for qualified just kind of depending on whether or not this is a private or by a public or by invitation only bid.
I can come in here and select all that apply and now only those vendors that are in the groups I've selected will appear and then I can invite them to the project.
That's a by invitation only bid. We're going to do our bid open to the public.
I'm going to notify a 153 This may be a nice number for you or not so great, depending on your project.
We're going to talk about how we can expand our outreach using BID broadcasts a little later on when we're ready to actually publish our project.
The contact information will default to the user's information, but you can override it and change it.
Bids to an owner's agent, you'll typically leave that alone unless the consultant will receive the bids in and make a recommendation to you.
You have your department address information. If any of this is incorrect, you can go ahead and change it.
And then let your superuser know they'll be able to change it in the admin area.
Other bid details.
Engineer's estimate, notice it says internal use only.
The vendor community will not see this.
If you're using the other three templates, quick quote general professional services, engineer's estimate will be called target bid amount.
Different name, same function.
If I type in a five and a bunch of zeros, notice that the dollar sign and the commas are automatically placed.
and if I tab away the decimals are automatically placed.
If however I do it in the field below estimated bid value which the vendor community can see you'll notice there's no dollar sign, no comma, no decimal.
This field I am allowed to put in whatever I would like, alpha, numeric, or a range.
The top field engineers estimate your vendor community will not have any access to the field below it they will all of these fields again are optional bid valid how long should the offer be good for once the bid closes any liquidated damages start delivery project duration and license requirements below that you'll see three more internal use only buttons prevailing wage You will find prevailing wage on the professional services and public works.
If you do have a prevailing wage clause in here, you can select it.
That way when the auditors come and want to see all of your prevailing wage bids, you can quickly sort and search by them.
Cooperative and piggybackable, if you are conducting the cooperative bid or you have piggybackable language on your bid, please select it so that other agencies can take advantage of in the BidSpec library. BidBond.
If you have bonding requirements, both on the Professional Services and Public Works Bid, you can set the bond requirement to a percentage or a dollar amount and then enter in that amount or a percentage or you can skip it altogether. Prebid Meeting. Will you have a prebid meeting?
Is this prebid meeting mandatory or optional?
Here we're going to leave it at optional.
When is my pre-bid meeting?
I could type it in, I could click on it and select the date and the time, or I can go to scheduler.
The scheduler is going to show you just how busy you are as an agency.
The darker the green, the less events.
The lighter the green, the more events.
And if I go ahead and select a date and I scroll through, you'll notice it'll tell me what type of event is happening.
And if I hold my mouse over it, it will tell me the name of the bid and the exact time of that event.
I'm going to go ahead and select today, which is Sunday the 14th, and I'm going to go ahead and scroll to my time.
I'm going to have this bit close, let's have it close on Monday at 4 p.m.
Once I've selected it, it will show up down here at the bottom.
And then I hit done, it will auto-populate.
And then I can say where my meeting is going to occur, and you can put any other information you might want to in here about your meeting.
Q &A. Are we going to entertain questions? Yes.
When must those questions be due by?
So this here is going to be when the vendor community must submit their questions by to you.
Not when you have to release the answers, but when must they turn them in to you? Question notification list.
You'll notice that my email address is already there.
This can be defaulted in admin bid management settings.
You can override the default.
You can add as many people as you need to.
Anytime the vendor community asks a question, the people listed here will be notified.
The email will simply tell you that there are questions that have been submitted on this particular project, and you must enter into the project on the Q &A tab order to view them. Preferences. Will you be doing any preferences?
If you give a local preference, you can select that to let your vendors know.
If you're going to do additional preferences like disadvantaged business, disabled veteran business, small business, you can pick from your list.
This list is managed by your agency and vendor management. Restrictions.
Restrictions is a hybrid between a public bid and a by invitation only bid.
Here, if we set restrictions to e-bidding only, we might set it to classification or group.
If you are in California, you might wanna use classification for the California DIR.
That is a requirement for construction bidding in California.
Vendors must be registered with the DIR before they can submit on most projects.
Here, by turning this on, I've allowed anybody to be able to see this project.
If they meet my outreach, they will be notified of it, and they can go ahead and participate throughout the entire bidding process up until such time as they go to submit their offer electronically, at which point the system is going to look at their vendor profile with you, and if they do not meet this requirement, we are not going to allow them to bid.
The second they update their profile they will be able to bid.
On top of classifications you can add in groups.
So here they not only have to be registered with the DIR but I had to put them into my group, all water approved primes.
Now I can turn off classifications as well and just leave it set to group.
The nice thing about groups is I can actually have my qualification document as a public document.
The vendors will be able to download it and then turn it into me.
Once I approve them I can stick them in the group and then they can submit their bid.
I can go a little bit tighter with my control and put it to downloads and eBidding.
With downloads it's referring to the types of documents that I'm going to be handing out to my vendor community. Here we have two types of documents, public and private.
Public says anybody can download those documents, we don't care who you are, we're not going to ask questions.
The private says we want to know who you are, that way we know you're interested, we have an idea of how many people are actually interested in this project, and if we do an addenda or send out a custom email the system will know who...

The private says we want to know who you are, that way we know you're interested, we have an idea of how many people are actually interested in this project, and if we do an addenda or send out a custom email, the system will know who to notify.

So in this case I can have my qualification statement again via public document, then all the rest of the documents be private.

Here, unless I put them into the qualification group, they will not get those private documents.

For the purpose of our bid, we're going to turn restrictions off.

Description and scope. What is this project all about?

In this particular bid, I could copy and paste from my bid document. I could leave it alone, maybe I'm just going out for a few widgets, no explanation necessary, or I can type in what we need. The boxes will expand as you need them.

Other details, notes, local programs, and policies—they are all free-form and you can use and put in whatever information you would like.

Special Notices.

In Admin Forbid Management under Special Notices, you will be able to create a list of common statements that you might use over and over again in your bid document.

Rather than having to type it each time, you can come in here and select all that apply and it will automatically populate.

This way you know that everybody is using the right terminology at your agency.

Below that you're going to see internal notification email list, and again my emails defaulted. You can manage the default in admin bid management settings.

For the internal notification email list, you can add as many people as you would like. They do not have to be a user of the system.

So if you have a board member, council member, project manager, somebody that you would like to keep in the loop on this particular project but you don't necessarily want them to have to register as a vendor, by putting their information here, anytime our system sends out an email to the public, they will be copied on it.

Do not use the hide from all vendors. Archive will let you know if you've archived your bid.

Up at the top, we're going to see the save bid. I'm going to go ahead and save it.

I do not have to save it now. I can keep working on my bid, but I wanted to let you know that by doing that I can come back whenever I'm ready and when I click on it notice that it's locked. In order to release your bid you'll click edit.

This way you can always look at your bid without making any accidental changes. All right, we've completed the bid information tab.

Now let's look at line items.

Every template will default to section one line one, and if I click on the section one I can rename it.

Maybe I want to say main bid or office furniture, depending on what it is that I'm doing.

And I can click on add section if you need to add another section.

For each section it will default to line one, but I can click on the arrows to keep adding lines.

Each section will have a folder in front of it.

If in admin for bid management under the line item library you've created a library of common line items that you've purchased over and over again, you can click on the folder to view the entire library, and you can search and select all that apply.

You can uncheck to clear your search and simply scroll through and select all that apply to your particular project, hit insert, and it will automatically insert it into your project.

Each line, if you have not used the item code field, will also have a folder.

Here, if I type in “BA,” you'll notice it's going to search wherever that falls into the category item.

I'm going to go ahead and select it and add it to my line.

I can also grab a line and rearrange it within the section, or I can come up here to the top and completely reorganize my section.

If you hold your mouse over a line, you'll see that the number turns to a red X. Click it to remove the line, and if it's the last line in the section, the section disappears.

In the training for the introduction to Planet Bid, on the home page we showed you where to find the line item import template.

If you've downloaded the import template and your departments have given you the shopping list, rather than typing all of this in you can click on the import.

You can drag and drop your files or browse, and once you've selected your file it's going to give you a preview to make sure that all the information is falling into the right column header.

Once you hit continue—if you already have line items established—it will ask if you want to add to the existing lines or completely replace.

And it will instantly import all of those line items for you.

And even from here, you can go ahead and make edits.

Over to the right-hand side, you'll see unit price precision.

The public works template will default to two, and the other templates will default to four, but you can override the defaults.

Documents.

This is where we're going to hand out all of our documents.

If your bid does not have any documents—if you're doing a quote—you can skip this tab altogether.

So what are the documents we want to hand out to our vendors?

You can drag and drop or browse and select all the documents that pertain to your particular project.

Over here on the far right, you'll see the document library file.

In Admin, Forbid Management, the document library, you can create a library of common documents your agency uses over and over again.

These are the documents that will not change based upon the project.

So here I've uploaded our general terms and conditions.

Notice anything that I pull from my desktop, the public box is unchecked.

This denotes that it is a private document and vendors will have to log in in order to download it.

Anything from the library has the public box checked.

Vendors do not need to log in to download it.

I can override the defaults.

In the center, while in draft mode, you will see “remove,” and it will completely remove that file.

Once you are live, “remove” will become “recall,” and you can recall your documents at any time.

If you recall a document and we have tracked which vendors have downloaded it, we will send them a notification that you have recalled that document, and from that point forward nobody else will be able to download it.

Title is the only mandatory item on this tab.

You must give each document its own title.

It does not have to match your file name.

The next two items I'm going to cover are optional.

The first one is the hash sign here.

You can do this at any time—while in draft mode or in planning or bidding mode.

This will allow you to reorganize your documents.

Simply put a position number and it will reorder your documents for you.

Please note you cannot leave it blank unless you want it to be at the top of the list. A blank will be considered a zero.

The last option here I'm going to turn on, but please note:

In admin, bid management settings, there are three text boxes.

The very top text box—box number one—you must have a message in order to fully utilize this function.

That text box is typically used when Homeland Security is involved in your project and you have a statement vendors must agree to before they get your private document.

In this example I'm going to turn it on so you can see how it works.

Up at the top, again, I can save my bid or go back to the Bid Information tab.

Let's talk about those stages again.

Now that I've saved it once, when I come back in, I'm about ready.

I could mark it “needs approval,” as I mentioned, and assign it to my approver.

My approver can come in, review it, and say no, there are changes that need to be done.

On the comments and history tab the approver can write what those changes are.

Once the approver saves it, it will go back to the initiator with those change requests, and back and forth until the approver puts it into “published approved.”

If as the originator I have the ability to put the bid into bidding or planning stage, I can do so. But if I'm fully draft only, the approver will have take-over.

The approver can also deny it and then again push it into planning or bidding.

While it is in planning or bidding stage, you can cancel the project. The project will automatically close based upon your due date and time.

We're going to go into bidding stage.

We're going to notify 103 vendors that are registered with my agency.

I might want to expand my outreach on this particular project.

So now that I'm in bidding stage, notice that the activate bid broadcast is available.

Once selected, it's going to tell me that I have to pick my criteria and hit search, and it will show how many outreach notifications I'm allowed.

In this case I'm allowed an additional 200 notifications.

I'm going to come in here and pick categories.

When I pick categories, you will have access not just to your own category code but to all codes used by all of our agencies, and then you can select all that apply.

You do not have to stick with your codes.

If you see a code that you like, you can select it.

You can search for codes at the top, and you can see it's going to show all different code systems.

Once you've picked your codes, you can further narrow your search by country, state, city, zip code, contractor license, vendor types.

Once everything is set up, make sure you hit search.

It will let you know how many vendors are found at other agencies.

If it finds fewer than 250—which is what you're set for—it will notify all of them.

If it finds more, it's going to randomly select up to 250 vendors.

Please note this outreach has nothing to do with your vendor outreach. You can use bid broadcast no matter how many of your own vendors the system found.

You could have a thousand vendors here and still use bid broadcast.

Once I hit save bid, it will validate to make sure your bid due date and cutoff time for Q&A are not in the past and do not conflict with the bid time.

Let me change my bid time and now hit save bid and publish.

At this point, two emails have gone out to my own vendors, regardless of the number found.

It will notify all of them and say, “Your agency has a bid for such-and-such. If you're interested, please log in and participate.”

The second email is bid broadcast: “Agency such-and-such has a bid for ___. If you're interested, please click here to register and participate.”

So you're expanding your outreach and creating a greater, wider net of vendors to hopefully participate in your project.

And now our project is live.

So I'm going to search by SAGE and here we can see.

We have one day for this bid to close, and the bid before it has 15 hours, 35 minutes, and 18 seconds.

We are going to do a countdown for both you and your vendors.

Now that this bid is live, I can come in here and make any edits.

Now that the bid is live, I can come in here and edit it and make any necessary changes.

I want to point out the Bid Results tab here.

If you're doing an RFI or RFP, then it's highly recommended that you turn off “Make Bid Results Public.”

You do not want the public to see who submitted on an RFP because that's going to affect your negotiation power.

So always turn that off if you're doing an RFP or RFI.

Also in here, the comments and history tab.

It will show you any edits that were made and who made them.

And the summary tab.

The summary tab is available while you are in draft mode.

If you have to advertise in newspapers and need a link to point your vendors to, this is the direct link for the bid for your vendor.

It is not active until the bid is active.

You can also print everything you've done on your project so far or selected sections.

And under reports, we can see who has been notified and any classifications they're tracking.

I want to point out one more thing on the Prospective Bidders tab.

We currently do not have any prospective bidders.

I am going to go to the Line Items tab and remove one line.

At this time, if I hit Save Bid and Publish, you'll notice the system allows me to do so without making any notifications to the public.

Until you have an actual prospective bidder, you can go ahead and make modifications and alterations.

That is creating and posting a bid.

The next training session will talk about managing the bid altogether. Thank you.

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Related Articles: 

Admin Training

Bid Spec Library and Calendar

Managing and Awarding a Bid