The closing date is the whole job
Most jobs are not lost on price. They are lost on a date that went by.
A late bid is not a bad bid. It is a bid that never happened. Public buyers open on the clock, and the clock does not care that traffic was bad or that the printer jammed.
So the date is the work. Everything else is downstream of noticing it in time.
Count backwards from the deadline
Take the closing time and subtract, in this order:
- Getting it there. If it is a counter, that is a drive and a parking space. If it is a portal, that is an upload that will fail at 4:55pm, because it always does.
- The signatures and the seals. Whoever signs may be on a roof. A notary may be closed.
- The bond. If it needs one, your surety needs a day, sometimes two. Nobody can bind a bond at 5pm on the day.
- Printing and binding. A bid set is not a PDF you email.
- Pricing. The evening you spend on the number.
- Addenda. Read every one, and acknowledge them the way the packet says. Miss one and the bid can be thrown out for a reason that has nothing to do with your price.
That is why the email puts closing-this-week at the top of the list every morning. It is the one part of the job that is entirely about not being late.
You will lose jobs on price — that is business. Losing one on the calendar is the kind that stings for a month.
The email is the easy part: every public notice we can place inside your radius, in one message, every weekday at 6am, closing dates first.
See what it costs