About BIDS Alert - Canada

Tendering Publications Limited Tendering publications Ltd. (BIDS) has operated in Atlantic Canada for over 30 years, starting as a bi-weekly magazine that consolidated all bidding opportunities for the Government of New Brunswick. The premise and main reason for starting the company was to ensure that suppliers/bidders did not miss tender opportunities.

The present management acquired the company in 1995 and began expanding the tenders that BIDS distributes and the technologies used to do so. With the advent of wide-spread public use of the internet BIDS was able to deliver opportunities more quickly and in a more convenient electronic format to subscribers in much wider markets.

Experience with the Oil and Gas Sector
In 1997 BIDS was selected by the Sable Offshore Energy Project (at the time MOBIL Oil Canada) to distribute bidding information and to provide vendor registration services for that project to subscribers throughout Canada and worldwide under the terms of an Industrial Benefits Agreement they had made with the Canada - Nova Scotia Offshore Petroleum Board. That commitment included a "supplier development, local content" preference on a "competitive basis" in their procurement policy. Since then the use of our Oil and Gas services has been adopted voluntarily by the industry, while others have been mandated under other Industrial Benefits regimes by other offshore and land-based operators, and major contractors in Atlantic Canada.

The Services BIDS Offers
BIDS offers both one and two-tiered bidding systems. The first type is usually used by governments and other similarly operating entities. The second, is used by construction or development projects. Opportunities are categorized to "BIDS Categories" of goods and services or to the "BIDS Oil and Gas Categories". These opportunities are "pushed" to subscribers via the BIDS Alert service to those who identified their categories of supply interest during the registration process. In addition to BIDS distribution of bidding opportunities to its paid subscribers, BIDS also displays summaries of these opportunities on our publicly accessible website.

How BIDS Operates
BIDS provides an open and robust bidding information service to our Oil and Gas service subscribers. In the oil and gas service the bidding information we distribute ranges from Bid Forecasts, Expressions of Interest (EOIs), Bidders lists through to award information. We maintain distribution reports and audit trails detailing our distribution of opportunity notices to subscribers and post updates to the O&G section of our website. If we are distributing the bid documents as well then the distribution report is updated with the plan takers information. These reports are available only to buyers as authorized by the issuing agency.