Everyone gets the same nudge

Oliver's question came in as a two-line message: does it tell me when they've opened it? Is there a way to give them a nudge? He was a week into a tender with five contractors invited and nothing to show for three of them, and he wanted to know whether the silence meant not yet or not at all.

Why the obvious answer wasn't strictly the correct one

Every surveyor running a tender holds two duties at once. One is to the client, who is paying for a competition and expects a diligent one. The other is to the tenderers, each entitled to equal treatment. Oliver has written about how the two pull against each other in Two returns from five: if you chase one contractor, you have handed them something the others did not get; if you don't chase, the withdrawals turn up on deadline day.

The obvious product answer to his question was a "nudge button" beside each contractor's name. But it is precisely this that a surveyor cannot safely use. A per-contractor reminder is a record of who you chose to chase, and a record of choosing is what a disappointed tenderer's complaint is built from.

What we built

Three things:

An invitation to tender now records when it was opened, meaning when a person at the contractor's end actually looked at the schedule (not just opened the email). Alongside the other statuses ("Invited", "In progress" and "Submitted"), the contractor list shows "Opened". A firm that opened the pack a week ago but has not saved a single price is telling you something.

A contractor who has decided not to tender can say so in one click. The invitation email carries an option to "Decline this invitation to tender". Contractors can choose a reason: workload, would not be competitive, not the right project, or other. There is also room to leave a note.

Finally, the reminder feature, which is the thing Oliver asked about, is a single button on the tender: "Remind everyone". It nudges every invited firm that has not yet submitted or declined, and crucially it nudges them all at the same time (favouring no one). The reminder can be sent once a day per tender.

The part that we left out on purpose

There is no way to remind one contractor. The recipient list is a function of the tender's state, not the surveyor's choice, and that is the whole point. A chase that can't be aimed can't be read as favouritism.

Every nudge is written to the tender's history, and the entry names every contractor it went to: "Reminder sent to 2 contractors: Crestview Building and Marchant & Sons". Equal treatment is on the record rather than asserted afterwards.

In the product

None of this makes a contractor who has decided not to bid submit a return. It makes their decision visible earlier, and it makes the surveyor's chase something they can show. What to do on return day, with two returns from five, is still the surveyor's call. The dashboard card that reads "2 of 5 returned" is there so they know the call is coming.

To sum up

So, to Oliver's question: yes, Tendermark tells you when the contractor has opened your tender pack. And yes, you can give them a nudge. You just cannot favour one of them.

Whether one reminder is enough, or whether surveyors would want it at a set point in the tender period, is something I want to hear about from surveyors.

If you level tenders for a living and you have anything to share with us (good or bad), let us know. It is how most of Tendermark got built.

---

Alexander Wingfield is a co-founder of Tendermark.

The tender in these images is not a real firm's. It is generated for illustrative purposes. No real tender data appears anywhere in our marketing.