Kraemer North America Embraces Informed e-Bidding with Bidx.com Competitive Analysis Suite

Background

Kraemer North America has used Bidx.com to submit bids in Wisconsin, Iowa, Michigan, Colorado, and Washington for over a decade. Early on in their Bidx.com history, they started exploring better ways to get historical information that would inform estimates and future bids. They also wanted to ensure they wouldn’t miss out on any available subcontractor quotes.

Solution

Bidx.com Competitive Analysis Suite and Small Business Network. The Competitive Analysis Suite can be added to any Bidx.com Basic or Pro subscription for a monthly fee. The Small Business Network is included with Basic and Pro subscriptions.

Results

Kraemer leverages the Bid Tab Analysis component of the Competitive Analysis Suite to refine estimates and determine the value of a project, as well as compare against other bids to inform future bids. While much of their subcontractor outreach is done through a different platform, the Small Business Network helps ensure they don’t miss any subcontractor quotes and can demonstrate Good Faith Effort when needed.

“The amount of time Bid Express saves estimators, especially when you’re bidding in a heavy month… You can actually start the estimating process before you start bidding a job to find out what it’s going to take to build it. The time savings for individuals is huge.” - Brent Freeman, Estimating Manager

Kraemer North America’s Approach to e-Bidding

The process of bid submission is much the same for Kraemer North America as it is for many Bidx.com subscribers. They download bid files, prepare the bid in AASHTOWare Project Bids™, export a COL file, and then import that into Heavy Bid to create an estimate. This process is already a time saver before any additional services come into play.

“Just being able to download a file instead of having to create a fresh set of Excel spreadsheets to upload into Heavy Bid, with the process we have it’s five minutes instead of trying to type in every bid item, which can take hours,” said Chuck Philipp, an Estimator for the company.

The Kraemer team also enjoys the ease of the addendum process and the timeliness of apparent bids.

“When we open up AASHTOWare, it’s pulling from the same folder, so it automatically pulls [the addendum] in there and does the update for us. Saves a lot of time,” said Brent Freeman, an Estimating Manager for Kraemer.

“Going further, once bids are turned in, being able to look at apparent bids the day that we turn them in… we all huddle up in our conference room waiting on pins and needles to see the results. Things like that, I think are great,” he continued.

But before bids are ever submitted, the Competitive Analysis Suite comes into play.

Bid Tab Analysis

Bid Tab Analysis, one of the two solutions included in the Competitive Analysis Suite, provides contractors with a treasure trove of historical bid information. How that information is used is up to the contractor. For the team at Kraemer, it’s a key part of the estimation process.

“It’s an essential tool for us as estimators,” said Freeman. “It’s great for looking up historical pricing and green-sheeting, or plugging up, the overall value of a job before we start the full estimating process. Before we get far into an estimate, we want to know what the value of the project is and the tool is very useful for us in the aspect.”

Read the full case study here.