When the deadline has passed for your solicitation or RFP, you are ready to conduct a bid opening.
Click to expand the following sections and learn more.
Begin the bid opening
Once your solicitation's deadline has passed, a new function becomes available on the closed solicitation: the Fetch Bids or Fetch Responses action. The Fetch action will download all of the bids/responses that were submitted via Bid Express.
Good to know
- Bids must be fetched before they can be opened.
- Responses must be opened before they can be scored.
- If an Infotech® Digital ID™ is required for bidding, your Digital ID must be the same one that was active when the solicitation was advertised.
- Bids that are out-of-date or non-responsive are flagged.
To fetch bids or responses:
- Once the deadline has passed, open your closed solicitation/RFP.
- Click Fetch Bids or Fetch Responses.
- You can then open your bids or responses (see the following section).
Once you have fetched your bids or responses, a new section will appear in your solicitation, called either Bids or Responses depending on your solicitation type. This is where you will open and manage submissions.
The Bids/Responses panel contains the following information:
- Business name | Displays each submitting vendor's business name. Click on the business name to open the bid/response.
- Status | Flags submissions as responsive or non-responsive. If a bid has been opened, it displays the time and date it was opened.
- Bid/Response total | Displays the total dollar amount ($) of the submission.
Click on a column heading to sort submissions by that column.
The panel also includes the following actions:
- Add manual bid | Enter data from a paper bid submission or enter an Engineer's Estimate.
- Export to Excel | Download a .xlsx file of the bids/responses table.
If your team uses the service's multi-bidding functionality or has opted to use either of the two Envelope component options, you may additionally see:
- Envelope | Previews what was entered in the first component of the envelope. Click for a quick view of additional information.
- Document | Displays a preview of specific envelope attachments from each vendor's bid.
On each submission line, you will find an expandable menu (indicated by three dots). Click to expand this menu and find the following actions:
- View bid/View response | On a regular bid or response sent via Bid Express, click here to view the submission.
- Edit score | For RFPs, click here to enter or edit the basic score assigned to a submission.
- Edit manual bid/Edit manual response | For submissions entered manually by your agency, click here to make changes to the manual submission.
- Remove manual bid/Remove manual response | For submissions entered manually by your agency, click here to delete the manual submission.
To view additional information such as the date and time of submission, name of the account holder, and name of the signing user, click on the submission's business name for full details.
Once the bid deadline has passed and the submitted bids have been fetched, the owner-agency can download the bids. All submitted bids are displayed, even those that are incomplete or out of date.
To open your bids or responses:
- Navigate to the closed solicitation. Click Fetch Bids or Fetch Responses.
- Scroll to the Bids or Responses panel. You will see all submissions displayed.
- Click Open Bid or Open Response to open an individual submission, or click Open All to open all submissions at once.
- To view more details of an opened submission, click on the submission's business name.
Manage bids and responses
Once the bid deadline has passed, the owner-agency can enter information for any bid or response submitted on paper or otherwise outside of the Bid Express service.
To enter a manual bid:
- Navigate to your closed solicitation. Click Fetch Bids/Fetch Responses.
- Scroll to the Bids or Responses panel.
- Click Add Manual Bid or Add Manual Response.
- Enter the details for the manual submission.
- Click Save.
- Repeat as needed.
Edit or remove manual submissions by expanding the actions menu (three dots) and selecting the appropriate action.
When bids are fetched, the service will automatically check them for responsiveness and completeness.
Responsive bids and manual bids are marked with a green flag. Non-responsive and out-of-date submissions are marked with a red flag.
If you have trouble distinguishing the color of the status flag, hover your mouse over the icon to view a tooltip that says Responsive or Non-responsive accordingly.
To flag a manual submission as incomplete or non-responsive, click on its flag in the Status column.
Out-of-date bids
Out-of-date bids are automatically flagged in the service, but you can convert them into valid bids by manually entering the bid. See the Manual bids section of this article.
Publishing and reporting
Once bids have been fetched or manually entered, you can opt to post the apparent bids. Apparent bids and their comments are visible by anyone who can view your solicitation. You have several options when posting apparent bids:
- Include or exclude non-responsive bids
- Separate alternate totals from the bid total
- Comment on posted bids
Responsive manual bids are always included in apparent bid postings.
If your solicitation is an RFP, you can also choose to post responses. You will have the option to include non-responsive submissions.
To publish apparent bids or responses, click Post Apparent or Post Responses (respectively) from the top of your closed solicitation's fetched bids page. Select or clear the checkbox to include or exclude non-responsive bids. Confirm by clicking Post.
To remove apparent bids, click Remove Apparent from the top of your solicitation's fetched bids page.
Good to know
- When apparent bids are posted, an email is sent to all businesses that submitted a bid and vendors who elected to receive notifications from your plan holders list.
- Other owner-agencies can see the results from the closed solicitations list on your home page.
- If you post the apparent bids and then delete or change the status of a bid, you can post the apparent bids again to reflect the change.
Owner-agencies can post documents, such as a notice of award, to a closed solicitation. Anyone who can navigate to the solicitation can view the documents. Vendors who are plan holders for the solicitation or who have signed up for agency notifications will receive an email that a document has been uploaded.