One of the key requirements for construction projects and in particular those based on the traditional design-bid-build is having pre-bid meetings that are held during the bid period. The purpose of a pre-bid meeting is to clarify any concerns bidders may have with the contract documents, the scope of work, and other details. Interested bidders are allowed to request clarifications on the invitation for bids or request for proposals by a stipulated date, and the pre-bid meeting is held within that period.
Pre-bid meetings are conducted by the project owner who will prepare and share the agenda for the meeting. Most projects require the attendance of interested bidders. Pre-bid meetings are typically held one week or more after the announcement of the invitation for bids. This allows prospective bidders to read and study the contract documents and produce a request for clarification if they have one.
Using Project Management Information Systems (PMIS) like PMWeb helps in capturing the details of pre-bid meetings in a structured and comprehensive format. PMWeb’s default module for meeting minutes will be used to capture the pre-bid meeting details similar to all other types of meetings that could be needed during the design, bid, and build stages. The meeting minutes header captures the details of the meeting including date, time, venue, and list of invited stakeholders with the option to highlight who has attended among other details.
The detail section of the meeting has the predefined categories of the pre-bid meeting added. If a category has different subjects to be discussed, then those will also be added. This enables the meeting coordinator to ensure that all items that need to be discussed during the pre-bid meeting are covered. The details of discussions held during the meeting will also be recorded.
All documents that were shared during the pre-bid meeting will be uploaded into the PMWeb document management repository so they can be attached to the pre-bid meeting. This ensures that relevant documents to the pre-bid meeting are linked to the meeting minutes.
After completing the pre-bid meeting, the project owner shares the meeting minutes with all the bidders who attended the meeting as well as project team members and stakeholders that need to be advised of what was discussed in the meeting. A transmittal form generates from the meeting minutes module to share and distribute the pre-bid meeting minutes as intended.
