When Gale Grady, district manager at PCL Civil Constructors, discusses Florida's Dept. of Transportation's information technology system, it sounds a lot like sailing: To take advantage of a beautiful day, or an interesting contract up for bid, a contractor connects to an online program that allows digital submissions, or even multiple resubmissions if modifications are necessary, before bids close. Like a sailboat catching a good wind, the e-bid system propels the contractor through a streamlined process fairly quickly and pretty smoothly.
"This is far and above what manual submissions are like," says Grady, whose Tampa, Fla.-based firm has teamed up with Walsh Construction Co. for work on the Pearl Harbor Memorial Bridge in New Haven, Conn.