Invitation to Tender

Invitation to tender can occur at several points throughout a project and can even be an ongoing process, depending on the project. Initially, the appointing party will invite prospective lead appointed parties to tender for that particular appointment. It is here where the appointment of the project team will be briefed on the scope and to understand risks. If work is required to be sub-contracted, appointed parties may also be invited to deliver on specific aspects of the project. This stage is broken down into a series of activities that will need to be completed in accordance with clause 5.2 of I.S. EN ISO 19650-2:

Establish the appointing party’s exchange information requirements

Before any appointment of lead appointed parties, the appointing party must establish their exchange information requirements (EIR) that need to be met during the appointment. It is fundamental to the success of information management for the EIR to be comprehensive and contain exactly what is required by the appointing party. To do this, the appointing party must consider the organisational information requirements (OIR), asset information requirements (AIR), and project information requirements (PIR) from which the EIR is derived. Further to this, the EIR shall establish the level of information need required to meet each of the aforementioned information requirements.

The acceptance criteria shall also be considered for the information requirements, taking into consideration the project information standard, project information production methods and procedures, and the use of reference information or shared resources provided by the appointing party. Any supporting information such as the existing asset information, shared resources, supporting documents, guidance material, references to relevant standards, and exemplars of similar information deliverables [1] shall be considered for the prospective lead appointed party to support their understanding of information requirements.

Finally, the dates relative to the project’s information delivery milestones and key decision points will need to be established as part of the EIR. This activity should be carried out before tendering the first lead appointed party appointment.

Assemble reference information and shared resources

In preparation for the tendering of prospective lead appointed parties, the appointing party shall assemble the reference information or shared resources that they intend to share. This may consist of the reference information or shared resources identified during project initiation, the information generated during previous stages of the project, and the status for which the information can be used by the prospective lead appointed party[1].

It is recommended that the sharing of such resources (with status codes) takes place in a secure environment, such as the project’s CDE. This activity should be carried out before tendering the first lead appointed party appointment. Following the tendering process, the prospective lead appointed parties who aren’t successful should have their access to the CDE revoked.

Establish tender response requirements and evaluation criteria

The tendering process should also include the minimum requirements that any prospective lead appointed party is to meet and communicate in their tender response. This shall be established by the appointing party, who will also take into consideration how they will effectively evaluate each of the tender responses received.

By doing this, the appointing party shall consider: the content of the delivery team’s (pre-appointment BIM execution plan, the competency of the prospective individuals undertaking the information management function on behalf of the delivery team, the prospective lead appointed party’s assessment of the delivery team’s capability and capacity, the delivery team’s proposed mobilisation plan, and the delivery team’s information delivery risk assessment[1]. This activity should be carried out before tendering the first lead appointed party appointment.

Compile invitation to tender information

Lastly, for the invitation to tender, the appointing party shall compile all information that is to be included and issued within the tender package. Some of the key considerations the appointing party shall consider include: the appointing party’s EIR, the relevant reference and shared resources (hosted on the CDE), the tender response and evaluation criteria, the project’s information delivery milestones, the project’s information standard, the project’s information production methods and procedures, and the project’s information protocol[1] and any appointing party BEP templates. This activity should be carried out before tendering the first lead appointed party appointment.

Summary

The success of the information management of a project will be based on the preparation of the initial EIR from the appointing party. If their information requirements are robust and defined in a structured and clear manner, the process of responding to and completing the information requirements will be much more efficient. Not only the appointing party but also anyone who is subcontracting portions of work needs to establish an EIR for the appointment, as we will see in further sections.

In the next section, the focus will be on how prospective lead appointed parties will effectively respond to the information requirements on behalf of the delivery team.

[1] Organisation and digitization of information about buildings and civil engineering works, including building information modelling (BIM) - Information management using building information modelling - Part 2: Delivery phase of the assets (I.S. EN ISO 19650-2:2018)