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It has become a huge pain in the neck to get聽accurate plan holders lists for projects that are bidding. Why? Because many bidders are getting complete bidding documents from other sources rather than the stated issuer of the project.

For example, if you are planning on bidding as a general contractor, you need to get your documents from the source that is controlling the issuance of the documents so that your company name and information are on the plan holders list and the subcontractors can bid to you. We track plan holder lists for our subscribers and we get our lists from the issuers of the projects, as identified in the bid documents. Sometimes we find out that there is another list “out there somewhere” that has other generals on it.

We鈥檝e dealt with frustrated subcontractors that did not submit their bids to a certain contractor because the contractor wasn鈥檛 on the issuer鈥檚 list, only to find out that the contractor was one of the low bidders.

That鈥檚 another thing. What鈥檚 with that? Why would an owner of a project even accept a bid from a general contractor that had a complete set of plans/specs that were printed by a another source than the issuer? We鈥檝e had generals call us and ask us to add them to the list, and we tell them that we can’t do that because they are not on the main plan holders’ list.聽 Turns out that they got their plans/specs from a plan center.

Don’t get me wrong.聽 I think that plan centers (physical and online) are extremely helpful to subcontractors, companies that normally do not have to purchase a complete set of docs.聽 Plan centers are also a great source of information for general contractors.

We were extremely pleased to see an addendum issued by the city of Hillsboro that stated, 鈥淚t is the responsibility of all proposed bidders to obtain bid documents and any addendum issued, from Precision Images (document control) listed in the bid document.”聽 The addendum also issued a severe warning: 鈥淏idders who obtain bid documents from plan centers will not be shown on the city鈥檚 plan holders list.鈥� Period.

To be fair, we have seen other bid documents that address the situation, but we don鈥檛 see it often enough. I think it鈥檚 time for others to聽take a look at this problem and聽that an industry standard should be put in motion.