Building engineering
The chief engineer keeps the base building running and calls out the work he cannot do himself. Roof units, the switchgear, a panel that has to come down over a weekend. Whoever answers that call is holding a licence, a certificate and a policy, and somebody has to have looked at all three before the truck arrives.
VendoRFP reads them once and keeps the dates, so the engineer recommends a company and the manager signs without a second folder to open.
The credential each trade carries
On top of the two insurance documents every company files, each of these trades is gated on one credential of its own.
Two trades
A company verified for one of them is not thereby verified for the other, because the two credentials are issued by different bodies and prove different things. A request names its trade, and only companies cleared for that trade can answer it.
HVAC
The federal certification required to handle refrigerants under EPA Section 608. It carries no expiration date.
Electrical
The state license to perform electrical work as a company, with the date it expires.
A plumber, an elevator company and a fire-alarm contractor sit outside the trades a company can be verified in here. Their invoices are recorded and paid under the building they served, so the engineer’s year of spend reads in one place even where the contract came from somewhere else.
Dates
Most of what a compliance file holds is a date, and a file is mostly the work of watching dates go past. These two rows are the exceptions at either end, and knowing which is which is the difference between a call you can place tonight and a company that cannot answer you at all.
Carries no date
There is no expiration to watch, so the certification is filed once and stays good. What the platform holds is the certification itself rather than a countdown against it.
Carries a date
The licence is watched to the day it runs to, and it is allowed no renewal window at all. A company whose licence has run out stops being able to answer requests for this trade until the state has issued the next one.
The file
A licence says the state let this company do the work. A certificate says who pays if the work goes wrong, and that figure is yours to set. Both are read, and the second one is checked against a number you typed.
The coverage lines, and the column that is yours
The requirements editor holds 8 coverage lines, in the words a published request prints them in. You set a figure per trade, so mechanical work can carry a heavier number than the rest of the building without dragging every other trade up with it.
| Coverage | Your minimum |
|---|---|
| General liability (per occurrence) | |
| General liability (aggregate) | |
| Workers' comp / employer's liability | |
| Auto liability | |
| Umbrella / excess | |
| Professional liability | |
| Pollution liability | |
| Crime / employee dishonesty |
You set the coverage limits you require, often the number your own insurer or lender asks for. A vendor whose recorded coverage falls below one of them cannot propose on your work until it is raised.
A late certificate has 30 days to reach the file. A policy whose own date has passed does not get that window — it stops the company from answering your requests the day it expires. How a certificate is verified
The request
The address, the trade, what the work is, and a date for answers. An engineer’s description of a job is usually better than a form’s, so the request takes it in the words it was written in and prints your minimums underneath.
Printed on the face of every request
Issued through VendoRFP. Vendors send their proposals back on this site. No phone number or email address is published with this RFP.
Answers arrive priced line by line with the attendance each company is offering. Whoever you award was already carrying the licence and the cover, since holding both was the condition of writing to you.
After the award
A service call at eleven at night is logged the same way a quarterly attendance is, with the photographs taken while the panel was open. The certificate stays in the same file with its date, and the invoice arrives with its own number and its own standing.
What the accountant is handed
Choose a period and download it. Each of these files is written by the platform, so none of them depends on an account with anybody else.
An engineer already knows which company he wants on the roof. What takes the week is proving that the company is licensed, insured to your article, and current on both.
Janitorial and day porterThe insurance exhibitHow a request works