Tenders & RFQs

The Procurement section runs competitive tenders (you may call them RFQs — the product currently says tender and bidder). Each tender carries a brief, a list of requested documents, its bidders, a Q&A channel and any addenda; the partner-facing side of it appears in the delivery portal for each invited bidder.

The Procurement page

The section’s landing page lists every tender on the project as a card. Each card shows the field of bidders with a compact journey line per bidder (see below), the tender’s status, and — while it’s open — a countdown such as closes in 3d or, past the deadline, late window — 2h left. New tender creates one.

Anatomy of a tender

A tender page has six tabs:

• Brief — the RFP brief and any attached files.
• Requirements — the documents each bidder must submit.
• Bidders — who’s invited, their claim state, and the journey dashboard.
• Q&A — bidder questions and your answers.
• Addenda — numbered instructions issued to all bidders.
• Settings — the title (editable after creation — it’s a presentation label, not part of what bidders were sent), closing date and the rest.

Closing date, timezone and the late window

A closing date is a real date and time in a named timezone (defaulting to the project’s), plus a late window in hours (default 4). Bidders see the deadline in both their own timezone and the tender’s, and the late window is shown to them openly — there’s no hidden grace period. The deadline is enforced where it matters: the portal’s submit gate refuses submissions after the late window closes, whatever the bidder’s clock says.

Closing dates may be set in the past, so you can record tenders you ran before the platform (“historical” tenders) with their true dates.

Bidders and invitations

Add a bidder on the Bidders tab. Provisioning a bidder sends their claim email immediately — the invitation is the add. Each bidder gets a walled space: bidders can’t see each other, and their uploads stay their own until you award.

Awarding a tender to one bidder closes the others’ engagements; the journey lines flip to Won / Lost accordingly. A bidder who withdraws is marked Pulled out wherever along the line that happened.

The journey dashboard

Each bidder on the Bidders tab has a subway-style progress line with stops:

NDA in → RFQ out → RFI deadline → RFI responses out → Bid in → Won / Lost

• NDA in is a manual tick — and you can attach the signed NDA itself, so the proof is one click away.
• RFI responses out marks the close of the Q&A period together with the last published answers.
• The same lines, compacted, roll up on the Procurement landing page so you can read the state of every tender at a glance.

Q&A

A bidder’s question lands in the Q&A tab unpublished — nothing is visible to anyone until you act. Answering offers two visibilities:

• Published — every live bidder sees the question (asker anonymised) and the answer.
• Private — only the asker sees the answer.

A question you never answer simply stays put; bidders never see each other’s unanswered questions.

Addenda

Sometimes you need to issue an instruction to the whole field — a scope change, a correction, a deadline move. On the Addenda tab, create the addendum as a draft (title, body, optional attachment), review it, then Issue. Issuing assigns the next sequence number (“Addendum 3”), emails every live bidder, and locks the text — the numbered trail is your audit record.

Each addendum has a per-addendum acknowledgement switch: when set, a bidder must tick “I’ve read Addendum N” before the portal will accept their submission.