The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the world in ways no one predicted.
Take construction bidding. At the insistence of industry and with the support of funding from senior levels of government, municipalities are working hard to fill their pipelines of construction tenders, and keep the taps flowing. But the pandemic is causing a multitude of unanticipated disruptions.
Two among these are that municipal staff—save for a few front-line personnel—aren’t in their offices nearly as much these days. Which means they’re not able to receive tender submissions on closing day the way they used to. The second problem they face is that most people don’t want to handle hard goods (i.e., documents) for fear of the risk that those papers may have come into contact with a COVID carrier.
Under these criteria, a new—and largely undesirable—trend is emerging in construction procurement: email bid submission.
“That’s a no-go for us,” says OCA president John DeVries. “Email bid submission may seem like an obvious and simple work-around, but it’s filled with risk.”
In fact, there are a number of risks associated with the practice. They fall into two categories: mechanical and ethical, says Kurt Rohmann, director of sales & marketing with eSolutionsGroup, which produces the bids&tenders electronic procurement platform.
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