Maximizing BuildingConnected to Enhance Your Digital Bid Process

ARIEL CASTILLO: Hello, everyone, and welcome to Autodesk University. I've been waiting all year for this special event, and I'm really excited to come back as a speaker. Nonetheless, it's my first time presenting in English so this edition already has a special place in my heart. And I'm really happy that I can share with all of you, all the colleagues joining this class. So again, thank you for being part of this amazing experience.

This session is titled Leveraging BuildingConnected to enhance your digital bid process. It is structured as an instructional demo, and I will walk you through the basics to get you up and running with BuildingConnected My name is Ariel Castillo, and I'm the strategic process and VDC specialist at Miller Davis company.

I've been working in the industry since 2010, and I had the chance to collaborate with companies from the states, Mexico, Panama, Costa Rica, among others. I love utilizing emerging technologies to create new experiences that allow companies and the industry as a whole to maximize their resources, whether they are designing, building, maintaining or selling a project.

Now let's talk a little bit about Miller Davis company. Since 1909, Miller Davis company has been a full service construction company headquartered in Kalamazoo, Michigan. During those 100 years, we've been having many projects throughout different sectors in Michigan that go all the way from education, industrial, to health care. Miller Davis is focused on continually advancing workflows by leveraging the use of technology, allowing our project teams to exceed our clients' expectations.

One of the areas that we've been actively working on are digital strategies is to improve our pre-construction department. Now, the main obstacles that we have experienced throughout the CM bid process is that we have encountered outdated data due to an ever changing directory. As you know, people are flowing into different companies, numbers are changed, emails are changed. Therefore, it was a little bit difficult to keep track of that valuable asset, which is the directory, the one that you use to invite yourselves to participate in the bids.

The other one is fragmented participation data, meaning that even though we were collecting information from our subs, there wasn't a single data source that could provide us insights. And last but not least, what I call the big one, and here I'm making reference to the pandemic last year and the inability to have in-person meetings. As you guys know, it was very complicated and difficult to have bids. And also imagine implementing a digital bid process which we haven't done in the past.

Now, what we ended up doing is that we started exploring the market and we identified features that were important to us. We needed a tool that could do a bid solicitation. We wanted to be able to do seal bids digitally. We also wanted to be able to review the proposals online, have a better directory, ideally crowdsourced, and that we could have external integrations with different project management tools.

And we reviewed multiple platforms. We ended up identifying that BuildingConnected was actually a tool that was hitting all those notes. We got one that we say, hey, it looks like we could test this platform and get everything that we're looking for in order to make sure that our process is improved. Now, for those of you that are not familiar with BuildingConnected, it's one of the solutions featured on the Autodesk construction Cloud platform.

And it has the largest real time construction network that connects owners and builders through an easy to use platform to streamline the bid and risk management process. And when I say largest real time, because it relies a lot on crowdsourced information. Now, we've been using BuildingConnected for over a year now, and I want to share some of the stats and fun facts that show the success that we had using the platform.

So the first one is we have used the platform with over 50 projects. These projects are benefiting from a fully digital process where we send invites, we share documents, and we send all the messages throughout the system. We do bid openings using the system as well. And we have also invited over 3,200 vendors. Those are all in the system. Some of them we have added, some of them we have found in the system as well.

And that is the power of the crowdsourced database, where we have a directory that's not only fueled by us, but it's also fueled by all the companies in the area that use BuildingConnected. Now we also have a pretty big amount of users that use the tool, and we have estimators, project managers, interns, business development managers, you name it. Everybody that can benefit from using the tool, we give them access because we want to make sure that having this database of information can assist them into doing whatever they need to achieve.

And last but not least, throughout those projects we have received over 700 digital bids. Again, that's 700 digital bits in a year, in a span of one year. We are not doing any more physical bids. Nobody's stopping by the office to drop an envelope. So again, this is all through the platform.

All right, so with that being said, let's talk about the BuildingConnected pro demo. We're going to start exploring the tool, we're going to jump into the browser, and we're going to start working on those steps in order to get you up and running with BuildingConnected.

OK, so let's jump now into the demo portion of this presentation, which is what you're looking for, this instructional demo. And as you can see, I already went into the BuildingConnected website. The good thing about having a platform like this one on the cloud is that you only need a browser. It doesn't matter if you're using Apple devices, Windows devices, you just open your browser, Chrome, Edge, whatever you have, you go to BuildingConnected.com and it will take you to the website.

Now, this website is giving you a lot of information about BuildingConnected, the products that they have, solutions for general contractors, subcontractors, owners, and so on. You can also access their library of resources, which is pretty awesome in order for you to make sure that you understand how the system works and that way you can get it up and running.

So let's go up to the top, and you'll see here where it says login. This is going to be on the top right corner. And once you click the Login, the system is basically going to ask you for your BuildingConnected account. Now, keep this in mind, BuildingConnected is an Autodesk company. And I really love what they're doing when it comes to sign in, the sign in process, which is, if you have an Autodesk ID account that's all you need in order to access the tool.

And this is the same ID that you'll be using probably with Revit, AutoCAD, Navisworks, getting access to those through your suite. Or let's say, if you use any other construction Cloud platform like Autodesk build, and let's say Assemble, you can use the same email. Actually, even the one you're using for Autodesk University will do the trick here.

So you're going to put your email account, you're going to click Next, you're going to log in, put your password. Now it's just checking my Autodesk ID and now it's taking me to the platform. Here you can see that it is a pretty simple interface. And I really like it because it's just giving you the information that you need instead of giving you way more than, when we typically jump into some platform they load you up with a lot of information.

This is taking you to the Projects tab. I have it setup this way. You can change it in the future. We'll talk a little bit about that. But just to give you an overview of how this looks, it's basically showing me the projects that I have going on. And I can easily jump into projects that my office has, or even company if you have, let's say, multiple offices. But before we do all that, I would love to show you the first thing that you should do when setting up your account.

You want to go to the left side, this is where you have your menu. And you also want to click on the top, right where your name is with your picture or if it's the first time, it's going to show your initials. Once you click there it's going to take you to your personal info. This is critical. Setting up a profile is basically what helps BuildingConnected to be so amazing.

And it's the fact that, keep in mind, that this is a crowdsourced platform. The information that we're putting out there and that we're sharing with other users is basically, it's going to be as accurate as we make it. So you want to make sure you put your name correct, you put your job title, and your contact information. And if you want, you can also add a picture there.

Now, why is it key to have, let's say, your job title. When companies are going through all the contacts, and we'll see this later on, they'll probably pick the person that they think is the appropriate one to communicate. So if you're, let's say, if you want somebody to take a look at a job so they can provide a quote, maybe it's going to be critical for you to find an estimator. And if you don't have that information there, then it gets a little bit confusing on who you should invite or not. Because you don't want to invite the whole company, ideally you want to contact the right people.

And same thing for the phone numbers, if they need to call you, having that information there it will definitely help. Just by clicking Edit profile right here, the orange button, it's pretty simple. You just put the information that it's asking you and you click Save. And again, you're providing information to this crowdsourced directory. And you can take a look right on the right side here where it says Preview your complete profile, this is how it looks for somebody else outside of your company.

You got your name on the top, you got your title, and the company that you work for. So another thing that you'll see here is Account Claim. It means that this email is actually claimed by a person, and that they're actively using the platform. And you can see here the contact information that we talked about. We can also suggest edits, again this is how somebody from outside of the company will see it.

If you click suggest edits, there's other things that you can do, like communicate to the Building Connected staff that this user is a duplicate, or if the person is no longer working for the company, or even if the email is incorrect. We'll take a look at that once we jump into the subcontractors.

But, let's go back a little bit and continue with the profile setting. So you can go to Account settings now. And this is a little bit more on the company side. You'll see here that there's a company name, and you're going to have your primary work email. But you can also have additional work emails. And what that means is that, as you know, sometimes there's people that might have multiple emails.

So they have their personal work email, but then they also have, let's say, a generic email, like bids@company.com. And the idea here is that if you add that additional work email, all the invitations that bids@company emails get, or info@company.com get, it's going to forward it to the person that basically claims this email.

Now something else that you can do here is that you can actually connect this to project management tools, like Plan Grid, Procore, or even tools like Cloud storage, like Box. And this allows you to basically push information or even sync information, let's say, with Box where you can upload files there and it will show them on BuildingConnected. Or if you're setting up a job to take it into, let's say, the project management portion, then you can do that through Plan Grid and Procore.

At the bottom, you have the start page, which is what I mentioned earlier. You get to pick if you want to change which website is going to be shown once you log in into the platform. And then, timezone, which I think is critical. And it want to point out that we actually had some issues in the beginning, because it was natively setting it up for Pacific time. And we noticed because one of our team, when they set up their bid's due date and time, they had it for noon and it was showing up on everybody else's account as three PM. So again, you obviously don't want to do that. And please make sure that your timezone is correctly.

And then last but not least is the notification preference. Here I have set it up, I'll get all the emails from people that are inviting me to RFPs. However, if there are some companies that you're not interested in working with, then you can easily just click, I want to specify who can send me email notifications. And you can basically blacklist certain companies that you're not interested in working with them. BuildingConnect is not going to let them know that you're not interested in working with them. It's just going to filter those emails and not send them to you.

OK, so now let's move into the Miller Davis company area, which is basically your company. And here you can see there's a list of all the people that are accessing the tool for us. We have a pretty good mix where we have project managers, we have project engineers, estimators, even our business development managers on the platform. And this is the people that get to use the tool.

Again, this is something that you want to review and analyze the way your workflows operates, and that way you'll make sure that you have the people that actually need to access the information throughout the bidding phase. Company profile is something that you want to set up as well. Going back into the crowdsource directory, here we're basically saying what's the name of our company, what business type do we have. So we are a general contractor construction manager. And we also self-perform, so that's why we tag it as a subcontractor.

You can provide your website, a tagline, and also a logo, location of the company, and then here you want to indicate what kind of work you perform. Like I said, we self perform certain things, and we want to make sure we're indicating what kind of work we do. So we do concrete and structural steel. So basically, it's adding up here concrete and structural steel. But we also do general contracting, in case, let's say, an owner is looking for a GC company in the area.

Now something else that's good to indicate here is the service area. The service area is basically where you are open to do work. And as you can see we are located in Southwest Michigan, in Kalamazoo, therefore there's a lot of areas that we're interested in working. And we, let's say, we are interested in also working when it comes to Traverse City area up North here in Michigan. If we are not listed, what it does is, you don't want to have companies that are not interested, let's say, in Chicago area or Milwaukee showing up as DCs.

So this is critical. Again, you want to make sure you indicate the area that you're interested in working so that way it's pretty easy for other folks to identify your company and where you're willing to work. OK. So now let's go back into Projects. And here is where you typically will do most of the job.

As you can see on the right hand here, you have a button saying New Project. You can just click this one. And by going to New Project, this is where you're going to input all the information that you basically want to have listed on your job. So you can have the number of the job, you can have the name, when the bids are due. And you're going to provide, let's say, a date and also time, locations, and so on.

If you input a lot of information, this is going to help a lot. So let's say we're going to create a new job, we're just going to put a random job number here, just for a test, so 2105. It's going to say Autodesk University Tent. We're going to say the bits are suppose, are due October, 26. And we're going to say it's due at noon.

Now this is when we get the bids. Now the location, same thing, you can indicate where it's is going to be. So let's say we're going to be working in Nevada. This is the last time I went to Vegas for AU. So we're going to say it's going to be at Las Vegas here, all right. And then if you have more information you're welcome to add those.

Also it's, good to indicate the currency that you're working on. Obviously, we're going to stick with dollars, but as you can see there's a variety that you can pick there. Now we're going to get important information here that I think is critical, not only for you, but also to notify the owner, sorry, the subcontractors when they have to do go on site to do a walk through and things like that.

So let's say we're going to have a walkthrough that's going to happen September 28. And let's say that the time it's going to be, Yeah, we're going to do noon as well. We also need to indicate what's the due for RFI questions. So we have-- if we're going to do a job site walk on the 28th, let's say they we're going to give them two weeks to come up with questions. And we're also going to say that it's noon.

When's the project expected to start? Let's say that it's going to start November 9th. When is it expected to be finished? We're just going to give it a month. And again, this is just information you're providing so they can keep an idea of how long it's going to be. You can also add the project size, the architect that you're working on, a description. So this will be this is a temporary tent for Autodesk University.

Obviously, you want to add more information here. You want to be very-- explains what I'm saying, this is going to be a concrete job or, if we're going to have steel what kind of owner you have, and as much of the information as you can. Now, critical question here is if you want to make this public. If you want to make it public this is going to show the job to everybody, and anybody can join your job.

So if they go to Miller Davis company public plan room, anybody will be able to join all the jobs that you have open. So I'm just going to show you real quick how this looks. And right now we have a couple of jobs open, and this is the bid opportunities that we have going on. We have-- and this, again, are open jobs. You can-- are public, if you're interested, you just click View, you join the job, and here you get some information.

And these are the big categories that we're looking for. So let's say you're interested in the concrete work, then you can just click Join and this will take you to the job and you can take a look at the documents and all the information provided. So again, pretty simple process, and it looks pretty nice as well. Just keep in mind if you want to keep certain jobs not open to the public because it's a private bid, then obviously you don't want to click Open here. So that's up to you.

Something else that I want to point out is that you can provide certain information that your company is going to use as reference for data. So you can, let's say, indicate if this project is actually negotiated or if you already got, or this is a hard bid. You can indicate when this is due to the client. Again, I indicated up here bids are due, this is from the subcontractor so they have to provide this by October 26.

But down here the client will be, let's say, Autodesk, and then the bids are going to be due, so if we're getting them from the subs the 26th, we can just say, OK, we're going to provide this to the owner on the 27th. This gives us a day to make sure we have the best competitive bid or the best pricing, analyzing the proposal from all the subs. And we can add project value, the market sector, and so on. Again, this is just going to be useful information for when you're actually reviewing data in the future, which is something that BuildingConnected allows to do.

Now we're going to create the project. And what it's going to ask us to do is do you want to provide files. Do we have any specs, do we have any drawings. So you're going to go into your computer, look for those files, assuming, let's say, that you have some specs. So let's say, you're just going to go here and you can drag and drop them.

And this is going to say, hey you got some specs here as well. You can, let's say, upload something like the drawings. And same thing, we can do a drag and drop. And this is basically optimizing the file so that they can actually read them online. This has a online viewer, which is pretty awesome too. This actually helps.

I'm actually going to add some specs from one of the jobs that we did in the past so you guys can see how the file viewer actually works. I'm just going to add it as AU front end. And I'm uploading the files here. This one is a little bit bigger so it's going to take a little bit, but we'll come back and we'll take a look at that.

OK so the next thing that you want to do is, now you are actually inside the job. I'm going to go back so you see where we jump. BuildingConnected set it up in a way that as soon as you create a job, it understands that you want to start working on your job. So I'm just going to go back a little bit where we had projects, and now you see that I have Autodesk University Tent. I have one project that's not published so nobody knows about this job, it's on the system here.

You can see that when the bids are due, the client, when it's due to the client, and who's leading this job. So right now I have myself because I'm the only one, but let's say that we're going to go to the job. And we can start reviewing the bid packages. Right now we have no bid packages, but let's say that we're going to get a new bid package.

So you just click on Create a Bid Package, and you're going to indicate how this bid package is named. So again, I know I said, it's going to be a tent, but let's just make this something pretty simple. So we're going to say that there's some concrete there. So we're just going to say that this is bid package 03100-1, and we're going to call it concrete.

And this is what I like about BuildingConnected, as soon as you say this is concrete it's providing you a list of work that you might be doing. So I'm just going to tag it as concrete. And BuildingConnected, compared to other platforms, it's not using the CSI code, which is pretty nice for certain uses. But when it comes to getting subcontractors, I mean, it becomes a little bit messy. So I liked the fact that we're using keywords here.

It's pretty simple to say if we're into, let's say, concrete work, but let's say you want to do something way more specific. So instead of just saying concrete, you're going for concrete accessories, finishing, flooring. Again, this might be easier to understand than having just a random code that might be 030410, so on, whatever, for CSI codes.

It's going to ask you again who's going to be the bid package lead. You can also indicate what's going to be the estimated cost that you have, and also you can indicate any instructions. Now we don't typically add a lot of information here because we kind of stay, keep it the same thing for all the bid packages, and taking information from the project.

So for all the information here for bids due, job walk, we're just going to say, hey, use the project date. Once you click Save, it's going to take you inside the bid package. Again, we have the general platform, then we walk into a specific project and now we're taking a look at a specific bid category. So as you know here we are on concrete. The biggest thing that we're going to do is let's get some bidders.

Now BuildingConnected makes this pretty simple. You just need to click Add Bidders. And it's showing right here, I'm going to show you subcontractors that are willing to travel to Las Vegas, Nevada. So, another thing is I'm looking for companies that are interested in doing concrete. And then there's some other filters that you can use, like if you're looking for a union or not union labor requirements. But the companies are showing up here.

And as you can see, we have never done any work in Vegas, but the system has already a lot of companies for us. So we don't have to start digging through websites, looking for directories, it doesn't matter if you've never been in the area. This is going to show a list of companies that do work in that area. Again, going back into the crowdsource, which is really nice here.

So let's say I'm going to be interested in inviting this company. So I can add all of them, or I can just pick the ones that I think I want to work with. Now you can see a company here, Stewart and Sundall concrete. They're located in North Las Vegas. So I can click on the Company here if I want to get some information about them. And this goes back into what I talked about, making sure you put a lot of information, as much as you can, so it's easy for others to access your company, enterprise type, business, if they have multiple locations, also what kind of work they do, and so on.

Now you can see here that we have a list of contacts, but we can also view all the companies that all the people that they have in the company. And this is why I said it is critical to add information about your profile. You don't want to only add information about your name and that's it. You want to say, hey, I am an estimator. Or I am a project manager, I am a controller, and so on.

That way, OK, I'm looking for an estimator so I know I can invite this guy. And I can probably invite somebody else that's an estimator, or it's better than inviting or just sending a random email. Same thing I can do here for another company, I'll look for the estimators or the person that I think is probably the best in order for to assist me. So let's say, maybe flooring sales might be a good guy. OK, actually estimator in sales, so I'm going to invite Ryan here, and so on.

There's many companies that you can invite, I'm going to leave it with these two for now. But before we go, let's say that there's a contact here. You can click on this person's name, and you'll see the information that I was showing you earlier. If for whatever reason the information is not accurate, so let's say the email is wrong or the phone numbers are not working, you can always suggest an edit.

And this is going back and forth into the crowd source. You are assisting the platform and you are assisting everybody using the tool in order to make sure this is actually appropriate. So let's say, if this user is a duplicate, because there's somebody else with the same person with multiple emails, you can just click here. And you add a note, and the BuildingConnected people will take a look at that.

All right, so let's just say we're happy with the companies that we added, we can also do an import. So if you're using from past projects you can definitely just throw them in, or if you have emails, you can add your own emails. Now the import feature that I was showing you earlier, it's nice if you're working for, let's say, the same company and you want to invite the same people that you invited in the past, then it's pretty simple to do it that way.

Now BuildingConnected is pretty awesome because it's always going to assist you getting new people that might be doing work that you're not aware of. So right now we have two companies that I invited in order to participate in this job. I have not published the job, but they're on the list to be notified as soon as I send this out. Now before we do this, there's stuff that you can also do when it comes to bid form.

And here is, you want to edit the bid form to make it look the same way you do with your project management process. So you can add, let's say, OK how much is the cost of the bid, but you can also add, let's say, alternates. So if there's a particular alternate I can click here and I can just say, OK, let's add alternate one. And we're going to say it's colored concrete, so start with that, colored concrete.

And we know it's going to be a lump sum, or we can also say if it's going to be a unit cost. There's a lot of flexibility that BuildingConnected is giving us. So we have that alternate there. Add inclusions, so if there's something in particular that we need to clarify, we can save. And we can just continue with the process. So bid leveling is once you get the bids. We're not going to go there yet.

Messages is if you want to send a specific message to the people working on this job, you can definitely do that. And files, if you want to upload files to specific bid category, you can definitely do that. And this is an overview of what the bid package looks like. So two companies that are invited.

And once they start looking at this job, this is going to start making more sense because you'll see if the companies are undecided, if they decide that they're bidding or not, and if they even looked at the add tool. Now there's a lot of things that we don't edit there. And again, this is us using the tool. We want to keep the information the same for everybody.

So we're not going to upload files to specific bid category. We can see the benefit on how we could do that, but we typically upload files, we're going back into the project here, we typically upload files into the files for the job. So the project will have all the files here. You can add specs, drawings, any type of files that might be needed, maybe a model. Or if you have agendas, then you can definitely upload that as well.

So people can get here and they can take a look at the specs. This is going to be done online, right on the system. So it's a nice viewer, pretty simple. It's taking a little bit to load because this file is probably well over 500 pages. But as you can see, it's a PDF viewer online. So like I was saying, we want to make sure we have the same information for everybody, but we also want to make sure that the messages that we send out, everybody's getting the same information.

So what we will typically do is we will send messages through the platform and we'll make sure that it's on the project, not on the bid package itself. You can also specify bid form requirements for the job, where you can have general acknowledgments, certification, if there's a disclaimer. You can add all that information. Again, it's going to depend on how it looks on your company.

And last but not least, we want to make sure that we add everybody that's going to be part of that job. So let's say I have a coworker that works with me, so I'm going to invite, let's say, Pete Hill here. And now Pete is going to be part of the job. And he's invited to join this one. He'll get an email, and something that I can do is once he's invited, I can definitely make him lead on a job. So as you can see here, I am the lead right now. But we want to make sure that the person that reads the bids and sells them is typically going to be the person leading the job.

All right, so let's go back into another test that we have here, so that it makes a little bit more sense. We have tested internally and making sure that everything works. As you can see here, our team looks a little bit bigger. We have an estimator. We have the pre-construction service director, and we have a PM as well. And we have not sent any messages, but this one's already published so it's an active job. We can click here, New Message, and we can pick who we want to send this message to.

So we can say, OK send this message to the entire project, and everybody's going to be notified. So something that we could do here is, sorry about that, OK, so let's say this is going to be a notification, addendum one is published. We would like to notify five files are live. So basically what you're doing there is everybody in the project will get a notification. It's going to come from a BuildingConnected email, and they have a link that they can access this email right away.

And the good thing about having it this way is that all the information is going to be shown in the Message tab. And it's easy for everybody to keep track when emails were sent, what kind of notifications were sent out as well. Now for this one, this example, we have multiple bid packages. You can play around with those. You can see here that we have multiple companies.

We did an attachment, let's say, for a test. And we can see how companies that actually view the invitation, that they selected they were bidding the job. And this is a way for you to know exactly who's going to be providing information or not. So something that you can do is once you get your bids, you can go to bid leveling, and you can see again this is just a test, you can see the companies that they're providing their pricing, if they have alternates, here we have voluntary alternates.

And then there's multiple questions that it's indicating that the bidder has attached a familiar statement, if cell tests are included or not, and so on. You can see here, attachments. So this is a good way to access the information right on BuildingConnected, take a look, compare bids if you get multiple bids, and it's pretty useful. Now let's see this on a real environment and I'm going to pick a job that we used in the past. And this was the public bid opening so you can take a look at how this looks.

OK, so now we're making a quick transition to a real job that we used BuildingConnected for. This is a public bid opening, and we had a bid package for structural steel. As you can see here, we get multiple bids. And we get to see the bid pricing that they provided, and all the answers that we have on our bid form. As you can see here, there's general acknowledgments, there's attachments, and then you get metrics on the differences between the bids which is pretty interesting. And you can play around and use this to your advantage and review how this could help you understanding your bids.

OK, now jumping back into one of the tests that we have for this presentation is, we're going to go to Files here. And as you can see here we have a folder named Plans and Specs. You click on it, and you'll see all the information that we have for this project. So again, pretty interesting, you can see documents that you don't have to get out of the platform in order to review those documents.

Here we have a specs. I know it's not readable but I need to keep it that way in order to keep away sensitive information. And again, you can play around with your bid forms, make sure that you are including the questions that make sense for you to have. You can have some disclaimers as well, and some information that might be useful for your team.

OK, I'm going to jump now into the calendar portion, which I think is a pretty interesting feature that we have. I'm going to go back a couple of months and I'm going to show you why I love this feature a lot. So for July 2021 a couple of months ago, this is what the calendar helps you with. As you guys know, you might be using project or you might have somebody sending emails and providing updates on what's happening when we have bids do and when they have to do job site walk throughs and so on.

Now if I click on my office it's easy for me to take a look real quick, when are the events that matter the most. You'll see that job walks are highlighted in purple like this one here, or if you have, let's say, private RFIs when they're due, you have them with the green one, and when the bids are due from vendors on red one and so on. So just going to show you a couple of months here. This is going to help you keep your team on track and understand the deadlines and the information that they need to provide as well.

BuildingConnected also has a qualifications module, which I'm not going to be showing right now. But it's a pretty interesting tool that allows you to do pre-qualification process. This is, in a way, sort of automated. I'm going to jump into an example, that an application that we're getting from a company just to show you how it looks. There's a lot of questions out there.

There's a questionnaire that you need to provide business information such as the limits that you might have, certifications and licenses, financial information, legal information and so on. And depending on what kind of answers you provide, they have an algorithm that will review your system, your company, and will let if you're high risk or not. This is a pretty nice tool, but again, it's a beast on its own.

Then you get contacts, bid history, and analytics. Those are other tabs that are they're very useful in order for you to understand the companies that you have worked with or that you have invited in the past. So far we have invited over 3,000 vendors to join our job and to bid on our jobs. And you can see here some metrics on how these companies are performing.

So you'll see here how many invites they get, how many they have that say they're bidding, how many they submit, how many they've been awarded or how many they have declined as well. You get percentage based data in order for you to make decisions in the future. This is actually pretty interesting if you think about this, because you might have a lot of the staff that don't necessarily know details on how reliable are some subs and this actually helps bridge that gap.

So again, this is all for the demo right now. I'm going to go back into the main tab and we're going to do some final comments. But I hope this helped you understanding how the platform looks like. All right, so we're done with the instructional demo for now. We're going to return back to the presentation, just to provide some closing comments.

Before we do that, I just wanted to show you an image of what our digital bid opening looks like now. We have a very limited amount of people that conduct a bid. It's pretty much a pretty executive, and he can have a project manager or an assistant with him. In the past we had a full room where we will have everybody in the room, all the envelopes, and we needed a lot of space just to organize all the bids.

Now it's all done digitally. We stream it, and everybody joins through a link, which is, again, pretty simple and we're streamlining that process as much as we can right now. Some additional benefits that we get that could be intangibles is our directory is automatically growing. The network grows, we get a better directory.

We have a cloud ready solution which increases the productivity when our staff is working remote. There's no need to have our project engineers or interns updating the contact information as they used to do in the past. And overall, I will say that we are reducing friction with our subs. This is motivating them to participate in more bids and minimize the amount of effort that they had to do in the past in order to provide a bid.

Sometimes they will have to drive one hour just to deliver that bid and then one hour back, and we are pretty much saving that time from them and they can actually spend more time providing better value to us and the owners. So we got to the end of the session. Just want to say thank you for joining, and I'm happy that I had the chance to show you a little bit of what BuildingConnected is capable of, and stay tuned.