SBN
Magazine
Cleveland
May
2002
By: Morgan Lewis Jr.
Online
constructionbidding can eliminated the paper and hassle of the traditional
bidding process.
Imagine
that the paperwork for an office, factory or school construction project is a
pyramid. At the top is a stack of
drawings from the architect who designed the building. The architect then distributes eight to 10
copies of the the project for general contractors to place bids on the work.
The
general contractors then might make 40 to 50 copies for the subcontractors so
they can bid on how much they believe their specialized work will cost. That’s a lot of paper.
“An
average project may have anywhere from 50 to 90 documents,” says Holly Mandak,
account executive for constructionbidding.com.
“That doesn’t include the (technical specification) books, which are 500
to 1,000 pages.”
Constructionbidding.com
is an Internet-based construction document distribution service. All drawings, blueprints, specifications and
additions for a construction project are scanned into a server and converted to a digitized .tif document. Construction managers, general contractors
and subcontractors can view all documents online, saving time and money on
document reproduction and shipping, Mandak says.
The
site is in its third year, including development. Robert Fortney, president of Fortney & Weygandt, Inc.,
developed it to eliminate the paperwork and inefficiencies in the bidding
process. There are 23,000 registered
users, and the site records 60,000 to 80,000 hits a week.
“We’ve
developed a nice niche,” Mandak says.
“We offer a lot more information that some of the smaller sites, but we
don’t overwhelm the users with technology like the large project management
sites.”
Projects
public and private can be posted on the site.
Private projects, open only to select contractors require a
password. “It really saves the owner
ultimate costs in document reproduction,” Mandak says. “Anything that an architect or construction
manager would do is reimbursable back to the owner.”
Projects
are posted for 60 days with an option to extend. After projects are sold, there is an archive of the documents on
a CD-ROM. Retention life of a CD
averages 120 years, almost twice as long as paper copies, Mandak says.
There’s
no fee for memberships for bidders, but the company requesting bids pays a fee
to post a project.
HOW TO REACH:
Constructionbidding.com
440.716.4088
info@constructionbidding.com