Tracking Bid History

[littlesky]

I am looking for any software that could help our company track our bid history (other than using excel). I would like to be able to report on the # of bids, what region, type of work, were we competitive, what markup we had, and so on. Is there anything out there like that? Anybody body have any home cooked ideas?
Thanks,
-E

 

[jheidt2543]

The simplest, easiest and cheapest way to keep track of your bid history is in Excel. I've been doing it for a LONG time and you can gleen a lot of good information on your local market.

Much of my work has been patterned after the work of the Fail's Management Group along with the, now out of print, book "Construction Bidding, Strategic Pricing for Profit", 2nd Edition, by William R. Park and Wayne B. Chapin, Jr., John Wiley & Sons, 1992. A few years ago, the AGC held a seminar on bidding systems and there are a number of papers in the ASCE Construction Division on the topic too. Most are pretty theoretical for every day use, but good back ground.

Once you have the spreadsheet set up, which should only take a half-day's time at most, keeping it up to date is pretty easy. The key is to keep it simple.

 

[CivelRocks]

I have heard of several different programs that have capabilities of what you want, but I have used them when I worked for a General Contractor. The one is an online program which supposedly is set up for consultants, GCs, Subcontractors and others. It tracks everything. Also there is a program called Bid Fax that GCs use to track there bids. Most GCs only use it as a mas mailing program but you can used it to record info about your bids from my understanding of it.

I think the best answer is get a kid in his first year or second year of school(college) that knows how to use microsoft access real well and make you a database to how you want it. I have seen this used. You figure $8 bucks an hour over christmas break is cheaper than buying these computer programs that cost $1000 dollars to use and then even more to learn.

Excel is pretty nice too. Just is time consuming.

 

[clems05]

Hello,

I was curious if you had an idea of what sort of literature would aid in the development & implementation of a bid history template/format in excel & possible use w/ access. I am not too well versed in access. I currently work part-time, mainly just to supress the boredom of the "office job", w/ a grading/utls company that does not have a system like this in place in digital form. Any advice would be appreciated.


Tx,

Bob

 

[dicksewerrat]

Access has a few sample data bases in the 'help' section. Make a list of the things you want to track and change headers in the data base to what you want them to read. If you already have access, just play with it for a few days. help to relieve boredom too. the help menu will walk you through linking tables and printing reports. very user friendly. good luck.