Online contract bidding hits the North: city adopts online procurement system.

• Author: Kelly, Lindsay
• Position: TIMMINS

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The city of Timmins is adopting a new online procurement service, which will streamline the bidding process while enhancing transparency and accountability.

In May, the city launched the Bids and Tenders program, a subscription-based online service provided by eSolutions Group out of Waterloo that allows the city to complete the entire bidding process online.

Gord Deacon, the City of Timmins' manager of purchasing, said now that the technology is available, it makes sense to move to a more modern, state-of-the-art service.

"The process we had previously was kind of antiquated," Deacon said. "It was mailing out packages, receiving packages via paper copy, and it was traditional, but cumbersome at the same time."

The city has been posting bids to its website since 2011, and so this is the logical next step, Deacon added.

During phase one of the program's rollout, the bids are being posted to the eSolutions website, but submissions will still be done via paper bids.

In phase two, which Deacon estimates will roll out by the fall, the bidding process will take place fully online.

Online bidding will eliminate incomplete bids, because registered vendors will be prompted by the program if they've forgotten to include any required information. In the past, the city would have to sift through the bids--sometimes hundreds of pages and inches thick--to manually spot any errors or inconsistencies.

The program will also enforce a strict deadline, so vendors can't submit late bids beyond the closing time.

There are other benefits, too. Vendors can prepare their bids over time, saving their file as a draft and returning to update it as many times as needed before their final submission.

And any time the city adds an addendum, the program automatically emails a notice to plan takers, who then must acknowledge the email, or they won't be allowed to bid.

Deacon believes the new technology will enhance transparency and remove any suggestion of bias.

"With this technology, you submit your bid and we don't even know you submitted a bid," Deacon said. "We can see you registered as a plan taker and anybody else can as well, but we don't know if you submitted a bid until after the closing, and then that information is released back to us."

The program keeps...