A municipal Request for Tender (RFT) can run to hundreds of pages. You don't need to read all of it to decide whether to bid. You need to find the six parts that decide whether your price gets opened, and whether the job is worth pricing at all.
We'll use the City of Thunder Bay's standard Information to Tenderers (Section 00100) from its Contract Documents Manual as the example. Every owner words things differently, so check the actual document, but most Ontario municipal tenders cover the same ground.
1. Closing time, questions and site meetings (2 minutes)
Find three dates first: closing, the question deadline and any site meeting. Thunder Bay won't consider a tender received after the advertised closing time. Questions go through the bidding system, and the City says no oral interpretations will be given. The template also allows for a site visit where attendance can be mandatory to be allowed to tender. If you can't make a mandatory meeting, stop here.
2. What has to be in the submission (2 minutes)
Look for the list of required documents and the disqualification clause. Thunder Bay's list is a Schedule of Pricing (in the Excel file provided), an Agreement to Bond, a tender deposit and a Domestic Supply Chain Plan. Its disqualification clause says tenders won't be considered if, among other things, they're late, lack the digital bid bond, don't acknowledge the Tender Form, or change the item descriptions or quantities in the Schedule of Pricing.
That supply chain plan is newer, and easy to miss. Thunder Bay makes it a mandatory eligibility requirement, with a minimum of 51% Ontario and/or Canadian content by estimated value of the work unless the City approves otherwise. If your gear comes from outside Canada, you need to know that before you price.
3. Bid security and bonding (2 minutes)
Thunder Bay asks for a digital bid bond for 10% of the total tendered price, on CCDC Form 220 or an equivalent, and says scanned or unverifiable bonds aren't acceptable. If the winning bidder doesn't sign the contract or produce the performance and labour and materials payment bonds within two weeks of acceptance, the deposit is forfeited. Toronto's procurement by-law, Municipal Code Chapter 195, lists "inadequate amount or terms of bid security" as a major irregularity. Call your surety the day you decide to bid, not the day before closing.
4. Addenda (1 minute, then keep checking)
Addenda change the job. In Thunder Bay's system you tick a box for every addendum, and a bid without them won't be accepted. If an addendum drops after you submit, the system withdraws your bid and you have to acknowledge it and resubmit before closing. The City also says verbal answers are only binding once a written addendum confirms them.
5. The pricing form (3 minutes)
Read how prices are checked. In Thunder Bay's template, when an extended amount doesn't match quantity times unit price, the unit price governs and the total is corrected. Prices that look unbalanced may be rejected. Your tender is also an irrevocable offer for 60 days, and the template says errors in your tender don't give you extra rights to withdraw it. Check your extensions twice.
6. Scope, drawings and specs, plus payment terms (5 minutes)
Most electrical scope sits in Division 26. Canada's National Master Specification follows MasterFormat, where Division 26 is Electrical, and its user guide notes that Division 01 (general requirements) applies to every technical section. So skim Division 01 for the general requirements that apply to you too, then read Division 26 and the electrical drawings for the real scope.
Last, check how you'll get paid. Under Ontario's Construction Act, an owner pays a proper invoice within 28 days and a contractor pays its subcontractors within 7 days of being paid, unless a notice of non-payment is given. Holdback is 10% of the value of the services or materials supplied. Look at what the contract adds on top, like invoicing requirements.
The 15-minute habit
Read these six sections in this order before anyone starts a takeoff. If the dates, bonding, supply chain plan or scope don't fit your shop, you've saved a week of estimating. If they do, you know exactly what has to be in the envelope.
Sources
- City of Thunder Bay Contract Documents Manual, Section 00100 Information to Tenderers, sections 1.2–1.9, 1.19, 1.24 and 1.25
- Toronto Municipal Code Chapter 195, Procurement, definition of "major irregularity"
- National Research Council Canada, NMS user's guide
- NMS table of contents (Division 26, Electrical)
- Construction Act, R.S.O. 1990, c. C.30, sections 1(1), 6.4, 6.5 and 22