How to read a tender notice

Here is a notice, more or less as it appears on KPPP for a division road work. The rest of this chapter reads it line by line.

The two checks before anything else

1. Class. If the notice says Class II and you hold Class III, stop. Nothing else on the page matters. A tender that says "Class IV and above" is open to everyone registered; "Class I" only is closed to everyone else. The relationship between the estimate and the class is fixed by the KPWD Code, and Module 2 has the table.
2. Closing date, and whether it has moved. Count the days from today. A tender that closes in three days is not for a first-timer; you will not get the documents together. On BiddingView the tender page shows the current closing date after any corrigendum, and the original.

The estimate is a message

The estimateEstimate (amount put to tender)The department's own costing of the work, prepared from the schedule of rates. Your bid is quoted against it, the EMD is calculated on it, and your class of registration is checked against it.Read in the glossary → is built from the Schedule of RatesSchedule of Rates (SR)The department's published rate book for every item of work, revised each year. Estimates are built from it, so it is also the benchmark your quote is measured against.Read in the glossary → and it is the number everything else hangs on. A ₹1.48 crore road with 8 months to build it says: monthly billing of around ₹18 lakh, an engineer on site, machinery for asphalt. The same ₹1.48 crore over 18 months is a different business. Read the estimate and the completion period together, always.

EMD and tender fee

The EMDEMD (Earnest Money Deposit)A refundable deposit paid with your bid to show you are serious. Usually a small percentage of the estimate. Returned to losing bidders after the award; forfeited if you withdraw or refuse to sign.Read in the glossary → follows a slab in the department's bidding document; the usual KPWD table is 2.5% up to ₹20 lakh, 2% up to ₹1 crore, 1.5% up to ₹10 crore, 1% above, each with a floor. It is refunded to losing bidders after award. The tender feeTender fee / processing feeA non-refundable amount paid to buy the tender document or to process the bid online. Small, fixed per tender, and separate from the EMD.Read in the glossary → is small and not refunded. Both must be paid on KPPP before the closing minute, and both are covered in Module 3.

What the notice does not show

The notice is a summary. The tender document behind it has the qualification criteria (similar work, turnover, bid capacityTender capacity (bid capacity)A formula in every K/W document that caps how much work you can take on at once: (A × N × F) − B, where A is your best year's works, N the years to finish, B your current commitments, and F a factor of 1.5, or 2.5 for works up to ₹1 crore, or 5 in reserved tenders.Read in the glossary →), the full BOQBOQ (Bill of Quantities)The itemised list of everything the work needs, with quantities and units. You price it line by line (item rate) or quote one percentage over the whole thing (percentage rate).Read in the glossary →, the drawings, the conditions of contract, the security deposit, the liquidated damages rate and the defect liability period. Never bid from the notice. Download the document, and read the qualification section first, the BOQ second, and the conditions third.

On BiddingView

Each tender page shows these fields extracted from the notice and the document, plus the things the portal does not: the status history, the BOQ as a searchable table, the documents the tender asks for as a checklist, and the contractors who won the last similar tenders in that district with their discount. Set an alert for "Class II, Haveri, PWD" and the next one arrives in your inbox the morning it is published.