Background: After dealing with a solicitation program that was cumbersome and unintuitive, the Facilities Planning and Construction Department at the University of Alaska Anchorage started looking for a solution that would make their process more efficient and easier for contractors to use.
Solution: The team now leverages Bid Express for all bids above $200,000, as well as the occasional RFQ/RFP. With intuitive functionality, time-saving templates, and increased vendor reach, Bid Express addresses the challenges the University was facing.
Results:
Improved Ease-of-Use | Increased Competition & Vendor Audience | Subscription Cost Savings
“It was more cost-effective, it was more streamlined, it was more user-friendly, and your helpdesk has been extremely helpful for us and our contractors who have reached out for help.” - Kent Ariola, Contracting Officer
To learn more about the University’s use of Bid Express, we spoke to Kent Ariola, the Contracting Officer for the Facilities Planning and Construction Department.
What led the University to vet other solicitation programs?
The University of Alaska Anchorage has been on the forefront of e-bidding for a while now and was already leveraging a solicitation program to accept and track bids electronically. The problem? It wasn’t a very user-friendly program, so the team was missing out on the full time-savings potential that e-bidding can offer.
“I had a difficult time uploading documents at times - sometimes it would just time out, and with it not being user-friendly, just to upload certain documents you had to make a lot of clicks.”
Poor ease-of-use is one thing - but the program that preceded Bid Express also cost more than some alternatives on the market, which was a bridge too far for the University. They began to vet other solutions, and on a recommendation from the Fairbanks campus, started looking at Bid Express.
Implementing Bid Express
After the University made the decision to use Bid Express for its solicitations, the next step was to template the University’s most common solicitation types and get everyone up to speed on how to use the software. Kent noted that responsiveness and effectiveness of the Bid Express helpdesk is a huge differentiator for the platform, and working with the implementation team was no different.
“The implementation process, I thought was great. Your team was really helpful in that process and if we need any new templates, you guys are very responsive. I think it went really smoothly.”
After a few demos and Q&A sessions, Kent and his team were ready to start using Bid Express and see how it compared - and hopefully, improved on - their previous solicitation platform.
Bid Express Use Cases
The University uses Bid Express for any major renovation and construction projects above $200,000 - mostly unit-price contracts where contractors submit a blind bid and compete to have the lowest bid. Lately, the team has also been posting more RFPs and RFQs to the platform as well. “It’s way easier than sending it out via email and it’s easier to track,” said Kent.
As the University continues to send out both low-bid solicitations and RFPs/RFQs, Kent said they will began to leverage more of the RFP-specific features that have been added to Bid Express over the years, such as a weighted scoring and the ability to invite specific vendors to participate on any given proposal.
