How to use the Plan Room in Bid Board (Bid Board Pro)

What is the Plan Room?

With the Plan Room in Bid Board Pro, you can discover projects published by general contractors marked as “public” in one consolidated location. This helps you find new projects that your company was not directly invited to, and thus gives you the opportunity to win additional business and increase backlog.

The Plan Room is available to anyone with Bid Board Pro. You can search for and sort discoverable projects based on Location, Work Performed, Company, Bid Due Date, and Expected Start Date. Once you find projects you are interested in bidding on, you will be able to join them and access the Opportunity Summary page.

How to use the Plan Room in Bid Board

To access the Bid Board Plan Room, navigate to Bid Board using the left-hand menu and then click on the "Plan Room" tab.



Your primary office is selected by default to narrow down the projects to just those that match your service area and work performed. Also, only projects with bid due dates on the current date or later are shown. 

You can filter and sort the list using various options, including:



1. Search the Plan Room by project name.
2. View the Plan Room in Map or List view. In Map view, you can click on the red dots that represent projects in that location to open the project details on the left panel. 



3. Use the drop-down menu to change to another office you are part of to find projects in that service area. You will be asked if you want to keep other filters applied and only change the office. 
4. Click "Filters" to open a panel with additional filtering options. 

- Change Search Area: Use the map to select areas to expand or limit your search
- Work Performed: Select what work performed keywords are used to search for relevant projects
- Company: Select a company to find projects with preferred clients
- Dates: Select time frames for bid due dates, expected start dates expected finish date job walk     dates, and RFI dates to find projects that work with your schedule. Click "View All Date Filters" to see all date options. 
- Additional information: Select whether to hide projects that you already have on your Bid Board

Click "Apply" to save your selected filters.

5. Click "Sort by" to select from various ways to sort the Plan Room. 

- Location (Closest - Furthest)
- Location (Furthest - Closest)
- Bid Due Date (Earliest - Latest)
- Bid Due Date (Latest - Earliest)
- Expected Start Date (Earliest - Latest)
- Expected Start Date (Latest - Earliest) 
- General Contractor A-Z
- General Contractor Z-A
- Project Name A-Z
- Project Name Z-A

Each project listed will show the company, the project name, project details (Click "Show" to see the project address), and the top bid package, the bid package that most closely matches your search. 

To view the company's description of the project (if available) and other bid packages available, click "View Project". 



You will be taken to the company's public plan room where you can see the company's offices on the left panel. On the right, you will see the description they've provided about the project and a list of all bid packages available for you to join.

Click "Join" on the bid package you want to take a part in. If you want to join multiple, you will have to join each individually. 

Once you join the project, the project will be added to your Bid Board. The client will see that you have joined their project. You’ll be able to access the Opportunity Summary, Files, Messages and the Bid Form. From here, you’ll be able to go about the bidding process.