Tendering
Issue, invite and open on the record
A sealed package, named tenderers and an opening you can defend — without a shared drive, a pile of email attachments, or a spreadsheet that drifted overnight.
The process
How a tender runs
- 01
Assemble
Drawings, the unpriced bill and the covering letter go out as one package. The bill a tenderer prices is the bill you issued.
- 02
Invite
Named tenderers are invited by email and open a sealed submission in your firm's branded portal, not a shared inbox.
- 03
Open
Returns stay sealed until the opening. Opening is a recorded act: who opened it, when, and which files arrived.
- 04
Compare
Returns line up side by side against the issued bill, so the comparison is like for like rather than reconstructed in a spreadsheet.
Controls
The parts that have to hold up
A tender process is only worth running if it can be defended afterwards. These are the controls that make that possible.
Sealed until the opening
Nobody in your firm can read a return before the opening event, including the person who set the tender up. The seal is enforced, not a convention.
Scanned before anyone downloads
A submission file that has not scanned clean is not offered for download. A warning is not a control, so there is no option to proceed anyway.
Two-envelope tenders
Where quality and commercial submissions must be assessed separately, they open separately and the record shows it.
A probity pack
The full event record — invitations, receipts, the opening, and every access — issues as a document, so the audit is a report rather than an exercise.
Query schedules
Tenderer questions and the answers issued to everyone are recorded together, so no bidder can claim they priced on different information.
Award on the record
The award decision and the reasoning sit with the event, alongside the returns it was made from.
Run the next one properly
Issue from the bill you already priced, invite through your own portal, and keep a record that answers the questions before they are asked.