Continuing on our series of articles on the upcoming Monaqasat v3, we’d today like to talk about another great feature we’ve been working on - easily creating sub-tenders.
Up until today, when a main tender was posted, all the bidders would automatically get access to all of the bidder-specific time and cost-saving features of Monaqasat, such as being able to immediately access the tender documents or being informed of any updates to such documents, being able to ask questions and receive answers straight from the consultants and submitting their bids online, all in an easy, secure and efficient solution.
However, in order for them to properly fill their bids, contractors must divide the large tender into dozens of smaller packages and tender them out to sub-contractors, who in turn might also tender even smaller packages to suppliers.
As any contractor will no doubt confirm, this quickly becomes a massively complex operation, jeopardizing its capability to respond properly to tenders.
So we asked ourselves: why can’t contractors also benefit from the tender issuer benefits of using Monaqasat, such as added transparency, increased efficiency and our award-winning immediate reports?
Monaqasat v3 now makes this possible, and it’s as simple as clicking on a button.
How does it work?
The best way to explain how easy, efficient and time-saving this new feature is is to go through a normal flow:
- The main tender is created and posted normally, without any extra work from the Tender Issuer’s side.
- Once a bidder becomes part of the tender, he clicks on the ‘Create Sub-Tender’ button. Monaqasat will automatically create a new tender and link it up with the main tender.
- The bidder now simply goes to the Documents page, clicks on the ‘Import Documents’ and chooses which sections of which documents he would like to use for this particular sub-tender. He can import full documents, specific pages or items from the BoQ.
- He then shortlists any sub-contractor or supplier he would like to invite, either from the Main Company list or add them from a Company List he previously created.
- The sub-tender gets posted and all the sub-contractors and suppliers get immediate access to the documents, can ask for clarifications and are automatically notified of any updates to the documents, exactly as for a regular tender.
- Once the tender bidding is over, the contractor benefits from the Monaqasat advanced reports and can analyse the received prices like never possible before.
- Once he is happy with one price, he simply clicks on the ‘Merge’ button next to the bid he would like to use and Monaqasat will automatically fill the proper sections in the main BoQ.
Using these simple steps as many times as needed, the contractors can now consolidate all their tendering needs into Monaqasat, thus eliminating confusion, reducing costs and increasing transparency.
New Bidding Options
Architects, Developers and Contractors however have largely different goals when tendering. Main tender issuers usually follow the very thorough and rigid tendering process, while contractors and sub-contractors need to be able to quickly get as many bids in as possible in order to get the best prices.
The good news is that we now support both flows equally, just by checking one or two checkboxes:
By enabling Officers and Auditors to see the prices immediately, Tender Issuers will not have to wait until the official bidding end date to get the prices and will thus be able to react much more quickly to the different prices they get from sub-contractors and bidders.
Should they want to encourage competition between suppliers even more, Contractors can also enbale bidders to see what position they are in during the bidding process (without of course being made aware of the other bid prices) and to restrict the number of times they can un-submit and resubmit their prices. A lower number will mean that they be forced to submit better and more competitive prices early on.
As always, we’re very excited about these new features and would love to hear your opinions and feedback in the comments section below.
