Most project owners, and in particular those in the public sector, require that bids be opened in public or with a presence of a committee. In addition, bids must be opened as soon as practical after the closing time. A tender opening committee often presides over the tender opening and consists of at least two, but preferably three, members – a chairperson, a secretary, and a witness.
The committee opens all bids that have been received on time and prepares and signs a tender register for each tender call. Upon opening each tender envelope, the chairperson must announce the name of the company who has submitted the tender, the amount of the tender, and any amendments to the total amount of the tender price, which would be the tender price plus or minus any amendments. The secretary records on the tender register the information announced by the chairperson.
Project management information systems (PMIS) like PMWeb can be used to manage the tender opening process. Using the PMWeb form builder, the Tender Opening Register form will be created. The form includes the fields for the Tender No., Tender Title, Tender Original Closing Date, Tender Revised Closing Date, and Tender Opening Date.
The form also includes a table that details the names of invited companies, whether they have accepted or regretted bidding, collected and submitted their tender, the tender value before amendments, the tender value after amendments, and if there are any remarks. For the fields that need to be filled with specific values like “Yes or No” and “Accepted or Regretted”, all those values will be predefined to allow the form filler to pick those values.
The Tender Opening Register form also includes a table to capture the documents submitted by each tenderer. Usually, this list should be predefined by the project owner as the required documents that each tenderer must submit. The list should include additional rows labeled as “Others” for additional documents that the tenderers might submit and for which the details of those documents will be explained in the remarks field.
In addition, the form includes a table to list the details of the tender opening committee members. The table has the designation predefined but needs to add the committee member’s name against each. Those designations usually include committee chairman, permanent member, deputy chairperson, permanent members, and, members.
The data captured in the Tender Opening Register form becomes the basis for designing the output form in the desired form and format. The form includes details on the tender, tender original and revised closing date, tender opening date, details of the tenders received including original and alternative price, details of documents received by each tenderer, and tender committee details. The report also includes three visuals to summarize invited tenderers who have accepted or regretted bidding, those who have collected the bids, and those who have submitted the bids.
