A bidder is a contractor or a supplier who takes part in a bid as a response to an invitation. Mostly all government projects are presented to several vendors who after reviewing the project, place a bid on that project and as a result, the project is given to the best available bidder. A bidder can be an individual or a company depending on the project. You can also check out this Bid Proposal Template to help you create professional project bids.
It’s a method in which different offers are received by various vendors or suppliers by openly marketing the details of a project and its specifications along with the complete criteria by which a bidder is going to be chosen. The key purpose of a bid is to complete a project or supply of equipment with the least expenses.
There are two basic types of bids:
1: Open bids
2: closed bids
Open bids are opened and reviewed in front of all the bidders and the presence of authorities whereas the closed bids are only reviewed by the authority and the bidders are not allowed to witness the procedure.
Here is a preview of a simple yet effective Project Bids Comparison Analysis Template created using MS Excel,
Here is the download link for the above-mentioned Project Bids Analysis Template,
It’s very important to choose the best available bidder for the project to complete it with minimum expenses. The procedure which analyzes all the bidders is called bidder comparison. Some websites do this comparison online but usually, authorities prepare a document to do this comparison.
Key Features that a Bidder Must have are:
- His and his company’s insurance
- Outstanding complaints from each company
- Total years in business
- Number of references provided by the bidder
- Contract warranty years
A Bidder Comparison Worksheet includes the Following Columns:
- Column for primary bid criterion i.e. price, experience, staff, reputation
- Column for ratings of each bidder given by the authority
- Separate columns for each bidder to give a scale
- Column for the average score of each bidder
The last column evaluates the ratings of every bidder and the project is given to the bidder with the highest score. There is one other thing that highly affects the bidder’s selection which is the individual difference of each bidder. It’s also written on the comparison worksheet. Some common differences between bidders are:
- Are there any hidden costs
- How many big references does a bidder have
- Which bidder has strong project managers
- Who are the previous clients of each bidder
- Which bidder has more goodwill among others
There are many advantages of using this comparison worksheet and some of them are:
- It encourages the competition between bidders and eventually, that ensures hiring the best bidder
- It eliminates the factors of preference, prejudice, and corruption
- In the case of open bidding, it removes the risk of future conflict because each bidder is witnessing the selection procedure
- It helps those bidders who are new in business and willing to provide good services at lower prices
Additionally, it’s important to include this factor here choosing a cheap bidder doesn’t mean you have to compromise on the quality of goods or services. It simply helps you to find the right person for the project at a reasonable price.