We run the bid desk work that sits around your estimate: breaking the set into trade packages, drafting and chasing invitations, logging addenda, leveling the quotes and assembling the forms pack. You keep the pricing, the sub relationships and the signature on the bid form.
What a bid desk hands back
A virtual bid manager is not a subscription and not a lead feed. Construction bid management services are hours against a deadline: the packaging, chasing, logging and assembling between a solicitation and a submitted number.
The chasing. Breaking the set into trade packages, drafting and tracking invitations, calling the subs who went quiet, logging every addendum, building the leveling sheet, assembling the forms pack, and keeping one calendar every live bid sits on.
We do not set your markup, choose which sub gets the award, or put a number in front of an owner with your name attached. The pricing stays yours because nobody outside your company knows what your crews actually produce.
Outsource bid preparation and you are buying hours and a process, not a pipeline. Bid management itself is not a lead service. Finding projects across the bidding portals and job-posting portals where they are published is the separate project-leads feed. We screen what lands, shortlist what fits and tell you what to walk away from.
A construction bid tracking service is worth nothing if the dates live in somebody's head. Here is the cycle counted backward from bid day, and where the 24-96 hour production clock actually applies.
Put one live bid through the desk
No retainer, no term, no minimum. Name the solicitation and the bid date, and a fixed quote comes back in writing. Nothing is invoiced until you approve it.
Scope gaps are not born on bid day. They are born at T-14, in the fifteen minutes somebody spent deciding which package a detail belongs to.
Steel assumes concrete sets the embeds. Concrete assumes steel supplies them and is not paid to set anything.
The boundary names who supplies, templates, sets and surveys the embed before the pour.
Every specialty trade excludes backing for grab bars, casework, TVs and handrails, and the carpenter never saw the schedule.
Blocking is assigned to one package, and the specialty packages are told in writing.
The scopes belonging to whoever made the penetration, and therefore to nobody. Firestopping crosses four trades, and curbs cross roofing and mechanical.
Pick one rule and put it in every affected package, or firestopping is priced twice and missed once.
Trenching starts five feet outside the building line, so two bidders share one continuous hole.
Both packages say where building excavation stops and utility trench starts, and who carries dewatering and spoil.
Too few packages and a bidder loads scope they cannot price. Too many and you chase four-thousand-dollar quotes while the mechanical package sits uncovered. General requirements priced inside trade packages get bought three and four times.
Supervision, temporary facilities, cleanup, safety, permits and closeout stay on your general conditions sheet.
Every scope no package clearly owns goes on a written list with a name against it. It reaches you at T-14 with a recommendation on each line, and your decisions go into the package scope statements.
Quantity takeoff servicesCoverage is counted per trade, never across the job. Eleven trades covered three deep and one covered once is not a covered bid.
Five to eight per trade to land three to five responses. Below three responsive proposals you have lost price competition and you are exposed if the low sub withdraws. Trades with two local bidders get flagged at T-14, not T-2, while you can still widen the radius.
Project name and location. Bid date with the exact local time. A scope statement referenced to divisions and drawing sheet numbers. The current addendum number. A working plan access link. The sub's own quote deadline, normally 24 to 48 hours ahead of yours. And a named human with a direct number.
A thin trade is a written flag by T-5. If it still reaches T-2, the ladder is climbed cheapest first: widen the radius, call the subs who opened the invitation and never answered, and ask the sub who declined who they would send it to. If that runs out, the choice is yours: a plug you then buy out against a number nobody quoted, or a qualified exclusion that can cost you the award. Nobody here tells a bidder they are high or shows one number to another.
A leveling sheet compares scope, not headline numbers. In this roofing package with three bidders, the apparent low bidder is not the low bidder.
| Base bid as submitted | $412,900 | $377,400 | $401,250 | Complete 07 52 00 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tapered insulation, 1/4 in per ft | Included | Excluded | Unclear | Required, detail 5/A501 |
| Roof blocking and nailers | Included | Excluded | Included | Roofer, per spec 07 52 00 |
| Curbs for RTU-1 to RTU-6 | Included | Included | Excluded | Required, M-401 schedule |
| Walkway pads to each unit | Excluded | Excluded | Included | Required, 07 72 00 accessories |
| Warranty term offered | 20-year NDL | 10-year material | 20-year NDL | 20-year NDL required |
| After-hours and weekend work | Excluded | Excluded | Excluded | Owner permits days only |
| Plugs added for excluded scope | +$9,400 | +$52,600 | +$26,900 | Internal only, never issued |
| Adjusted figure you compare | $422,300 | $430,000 | $428,150 | Apparent low changes hands |
Addenda tracking on construction bids is not a habit, it is a control with a checklist. Addenda land late, often hours before sub quotes close, and an acknowledgment nobody listed can void a public bid outright.
Your bid hit ratio is jobs won divided by bids submitted. Cost per bid is your loaded estimating payroll over the same bid count, and cost per win is that payroll over jobs won.
Most contractors have never run the division, and the answer is usually larger than the guess. Bid enough to hit your revenue target at your real hit ratio, and not one more. The expensive bids are the ones you should have declined at T-18, and declining them takes a score you wrote down before you fell in love with the job.
Score each factor from one to five, weight it by what has hurt you before, and set the threshold in a quiet week. Below the line you do not bid, and the reason gets logged.
Send two numbers and get the arithmetic back
Your estimator count and the bids you submitted last year. We run the division, show cost per bid and cost per win, and tell you honestly whether capacity is your problem.
Most disqualifications are clerical, not commercial. The owner's own forms have to be filled in the owner's language, signed, dated and complete before the upload window opens.
There is no software to buy here and no dashboard to log into. The tools you already pay for are the rails this runs on.
Six or more live bids a month changes the model
A dedicated estimator is 8 hours a day, 5 days a week on your board and your cadence.
The questions worth putting to any outside bid desk, including this one. Three of the answers below are reasons not to hire us.
You do, every time. Nobody here signs a bid form, executes a bond or submits a number to an owner under your company's name. The bid is a legal offer from your entity. We build the package, run the read-back with your person on the call, and hand it over two hours before the clock.
Notarize anything. Issue or deliver a bid bond. Hand-deliver a sealed bid by 2pm. Provide a wet signature. Attend a mandatory site walk for you. Hold a contractor license, a bond line or a federal registration on your behalf. If your bid needs any of those, someone of yours has to be there.
If you submit two or three bids a month and your estimator has slack, this costs more than it returns. If you lose on price rather than on capacity, a coordinator fixes nothing. If your work is all negotiated or repeat, there is no bid cycle here to manage. And if nobody can spare thirty minutes a week to answer scope questions, it will not work.
You are, because it is your bid and your offer. Our Terms do not guarantee a winning bid and exclude indirect, incidental and consequential damages where the law allows. What you get instead of a promise is the controls: two estimators on every production file, assumptions written before delivery, plugs labeled as plugs, a read-back before submission. If the error is ours we rerun it at our cost.
A specialty sub does not have an invitation problem. Forty land in a week across BuildingConnected, PlanHub and plain email, and the ones worth winning look identical to the ones that are not.
Answering everything is how a sub quotes six jobs badly instead of two properly. The triage is mechanical once the rules are written down: scope fit, crew calendar, travel, the GC's history with you, and the price the job will clear at. Everything below the line gets a decline drafted for you to send.
Your number is going onto a sheet like the one further up this page, next to two others, and the exclusions column is what will move it. Price to the GC's package boundaries, name the addenda you priced, and make your inclusions impossible to misread.
What contractors ask before handing a live bid week to somebody outside the company.
Short, practical write-ups on the questions that come up before a bid goes out.
Name the solicitation, the bid date and the trades you are short on. A fixed quote comes back in writing with the calendar populated against your dates, and nothing is invoiced until you approve it.
