Is there anyway to make bids confidential?

[cdslotz]

few companies bid anything out anymore unless they are forced too. usually a negotiated price works out better for everyone but is really hard to do on public contracts.

Public school districts and the like hire Construction Managers (really big GC's with their own CM company), then do several rounds of budgeting with their favorite subs...usually only 4 or 5 five of their best in each discipline.
Then when drawings are 100% it's hard-bid time. As a sub, I love it. Very limited competition......

 

[jmellc]

Might as well have. It was commercial offices, kitchen, and bath.. I had already demoed all of the old wiring and marked out lighting and all of my boxes on the ceilings and walls respectively...

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So you had already started the job? That sounds like a blatant breach of contract. Maybe you should consult a lawyer & see what action you can take.

 

[gadfly56]

Might as well have. It was commercial offices, kitchen, and bath.. I had already demoed all of the old wiring and marked out lighting and all of my boxes on the ceilings and walls respectively...

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First, you need to get paid for what you did, and any materials purchased. Lien the job immediately; it's not like you want to preserve your business relationship with this GC.

Second, sue the GC for breach of contract. You are entitled to the profit you would have made on this job, especially considering you had started the work.

Third, sue the other EC for tortuous interference of contract.

A lot of this depends on how much money is at stake. On the other hand, starting and keeping a lawsuit bubbling on the back burner can be done for not much money, and as a hobby, it might have compensating entertainment value.

 

[cdslotz]

First, you need to get paid for what you did, and any materials purchased. Lien the job immediately; it's not like you want to preserve your business relationship with this GC.

Second, sue the GC for breach of contract. You are entitled to the profit you would have made on this job, especially considering you had started the work.

Third, sue the other EC for tortuous interference of contract.

A lot of this depends on how much money is at stake. On the other hand, starting and keeping a lawsuit bubbling on the back burner can be done for not much money, and as a hobby, it might have compensating entertainment value.

I asked the OP if he had a separate contract for the demo portion and he didn't respond.
It's not unusual to let a contract for demo separate from the new construction.

 

[don_resqcapt19]

Was at a State Of New York bid opening one time, our Co. and one plumber, state needs 3 competing bids, we were the only cos that bid the job, so the state opens both bids reads them out loud and then said it needed to rebid with 3 bidders per trade! The plumber and I went nuts demanding the bid be let, got a no of course; guess who didn't rebid, both of us, but did start talking over the phone making sure we knew of upcoming bids; so made a friend at least.

We had that with a State of Illinois bid, after a few calls from our owner to state elected officials, the Attorney General advised the State Capital Development Board, that they should not have opened and made our bid public. The CDB was told to either award to us or make substantial redesign changes and rebid. They awarded to us

 

[Bobby08]

Thank you, everybody for all the comments. The job wasn't quite large enough to negate the costs of litigation to pursue something of that nature. I was paid for the work that I had started and I've just decided not to do work with the company again.

Had it been a larger job, I would've tried everything I could to get something more out of it.

Also, because it wasn't that large, I didn't think to write up any formal contracts, and I wasn't even sure if any of them would be legal binding, hence the reason for starting this thread. Again, thank you everyone

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[WA_Sparky]

Possible option?

Possible option?

I dont have much experience with submitting bids.. I'm on the engineering side of things. If you're allowed to submit documents electronically I have some ways you could go about doing it.

Bluebeam:
1. Password protect the document.
2. Protect the document and remove print feature.

Microsoft Onedrive
1. Use a drop box and invite each recipient? You'll see who and when someone opens your file. Anyone that isnt sent an invite link cant access.

Old rule of Thumb.
1. Turn your bids in 10 minutes before they're due and hope for the best.

 

[MAC702]

That's no different than someone opening a sealed bid and reading it publicly. Anyone with electronic access can still violate the secrecy of the bid. Agreed that minimizing their time to do so is best, but that won't help the guy that gets his bid read aloud and then the project gets rebid.

 

[WA_Sparky]

Yeah true. That's unfortunate there's no foolproof method of getting around that.