Tender Management

Win-rate matters. The Tenders module handles every tender opportunity your firm chases — from initial intake through pre-qualification, technical and commercial submission, evaluation, and final award.

Overview

Tenders is the pre-award counterpart to Projects. Once a tender is awarded and accepted, it transitions to a Project, carrying forward the BOQ, stakeholder list, and key dates so the team doesn't re-enter data.

Screenshot: Tender pipeline kanban — opportunity, prequal, bid, submitted, won, lost

Key concepts

Tender opportunity. A single bid invitation from a client, with its own ID, value estimate, deadline, and assigned bid manager.

Stage. Tenders move through a fixed lifecycle: Opportunity → Pre-qualification → Bid preparation → Submitted → Under evaluation → Awarded / Lost. Each stage gates certain actions.

Bid team. The team assigned to win this tender — bid manager, estimator, planner, technical lead, commercial lead. Bid team assignments are RBAC-gated.

Submission package. The bundle of documents and files submitted to the client. ORKSTRA tracks each file with a version, a category (technical, commercial, legal, HSE), and a sign-off chain.

Award & handover. When a tender is marked Awarded, the award flow kicks off: project record created, kickoff meeting scheduled, contract uploaded to DMS, baseline locked.

Step-by-step: create a tender

1. Go to Tenders → New tender.
2. Fill in: name, client, sector (e.g., infrastructure, residential, oil & gas), estimated value, submission deadline.
3. Assign the bid manager.
4. Click Create. The tender lands in the Opportunity column.

Step-by-step: prepare a bid

1. Open the tender record.
2. Move to Bid preparation stage.
3. Build the estimate using the AI Cost Estimation module.
4. Build the BOQ in the tender workspace — it carries forward on award.
5. Upload supporting documents to the Submission package tab.
6. Route the package for internal sign-off via Approvals.

Step-by-step: award handover

1. When the client confirms award, move the tender to Awarded.
2. ORKSTRA prompts you to confirm the project name, code, and initial currency.
3. Confirm — a new Project is created and the tender data carries forward (BOQ → BOQ v1, stakeholders, documents).
4. The tender record remains for archival purposes and audit.

Common tasks

• Filter your pipeline: by stage, sector, value range, bid manager.
• Track win-rate: Tenders → Analytics shows your win-rate by sector, by client, by quarter.
• Clone a tender: for similar opportunities — clones the BOQ skeleton and the document folder structure.
• Mark as lost with reason: Actions → Mark lost with a free-text reason captures lessons learned.

Troubleshooting

• "I can't see the Tenders module." — You lack TENDER_VIEW. Ask an admin.
• "Award button is disabled." — The required pre-award artefacts (signed bid, internal approval) are missing. The button tooltip shows which artefacts are missing.
• "After awarding, the new Project is missing the BOQ." — The BOQ carry-forward only happens if the tender BOQ was finalized. Check Tender → BOQ → Status.

Permissions reference

Permission	Who needs it
TENDER_VIEW	Bid team, sales
TENDER_CREATE	Bid managers
TENDER_EDIT	Bid managers
TENDER_AWARD	Senior management
TENDER_DELETE	Admins

See also: Tender Attachments, Projects, Cost Estimation.