Construction

Set the insurance floor once, and nobody prices your scope short of a line you require.

Ground-up, fit-out, renovation. Your subcontract already states what a company carries before it sets foot on the site: the general liability per occurrence, the workers’ comp, the auto, the umbrella over the top of both. VendoRFP holds those figures as a standing requirement, per trade, reads each company’s certificate against them, and keeps the date every policy runs to. Then you put the scope out and read the prices that come back.

The schedule, and the columns that are yours

These are the 8 coverage lines you can set a figure against, in the words the request prints them in. The columns are the three job-site trades VendoRFP verifies today — more below. Every cell is blank because every cell is yours — you type a limit against each line your subcontract names, per trade, and mark it required or preferred.

CoverageHVACElectricalPainting
General liability (per occurrence)
General liability (aggregate)
Workers' comp / employer's liability
Auto liability
Umbrella / excess
Professional liability
Pollution liability
Crime / employee dishonesty

It is the same paperwork your office already chases. What changes is that a certificate is read once and held with the date it dies on, so nobody opens a folder of PDFs the week before a mobilization to find out which of them lapsed in December.

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The insurance article

Your floor, and what happens at it.

Floors differ job to job and trade to trade. One owner wants a million per occurrence from everybody; the next wants two from the mechanical sub, five in umbrella over a hospital fit-out, and takes the painter at the standard. You type yours in. Every company that answers a request for that trade has been read against them before you ever see a price.

A person reads the certificate

A company uploads its certificate and a reviewer reads it: the carrier, the limit on each line, the date it runs to. Until that has happened, the figure is what the company says it carries, and it is reported to you as exactly that — a stated figure that clears your floor is not held back from pricing your scope while the read is pending, but it is never shown to you as confirmed until it is: you see the number, and you see the word unverified beside it, not a quiet pass.

Short of a limit you made mandatory, they cannot price the work

A company missing a line you required, or carrying less than your figure, is refused when it tries to send you a proposal — and told what it is short, line by line, in dollars. A line you marked preferred is reported to you and lets them through.

A lapsed policy fails on the day it lapses

The end date comes off the certificate and is held with it. Past that date the line fails rather than quietly passing, and the state of every file sits on one page you can open in the week before a mobilization.

The arithmetic is per line, per trade

Every line is read against the figure you set for that trade: what the company carries, what you require, and the dollars between them. Limits and dates are what the check is made of. The endorsement wording is a term of your subcontract and a matter for the company’s broker, which is why the four forms below are set out in plain words rather than folded into the check.

What your own insurance article asks the broker for

These four form numbers travel in nearly every subcontract in the country, and most of the people who type them have never been told in a sentence what each one does. Here they are. They are the industry’s paperwork, named as such — what VendoRFP holds and checks is the schedule above: the limit on each line and the date the policy runs to.

  • CG 20 10
    Additional insured — ongoing operations

    Names you as an additional insured on the company’s general liability policy for injury or damage while its work is in progress.

  • CG 20 37
    Additional insured — completed operations

    Carries that same status forward to claims that surface after the work is finished and the crew has left the site.

  • CG 24 04
    Waiver of subrogation

    The company’s insurer gives up its right to come after you to recover a claim it has already paid.

  • CG 20 01
    Primary and noncontributory

    Makes the company’s policy pay first, ahead of your own, instead of the two policies splitting the claim between them.

How a certificate is verified

The scope goes out

Write it once. It goes out as a document.

Give the site address, name the trade, say what the work is in plain words, and set a date for answers. That is the whole of what a request asks you for. VendoRFP writes it up as a formal request with your insurance floor printed inside it, publishes it to companies verified for that trade, and keeps your phone number and your email address off the page — so a company that wants the job answers the request instead of calling the project executive at seven in the morning.

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.

Your limits print inside the same document as a table, so a company reads the floor it has to clear before it decides whether to answer at all.

What comes back

Priced answers you can read beside each other.

Each proposal prices every line you asked for and states how the company would staff and sequence it. You read them on one screen and award one. Whoever you pick is already carrying the cover your subcontract demands, because carrying it was the condition of answering at all — which is a different thing from finding out at mobilization.

After the award

The job keeps its own file.

A signed subcontract does not end the paperwork, it moves it. Everything that happens afterwards is filed under the address it happened at, which is where a closeout binder and an audit both go looking.

Site visits, with photographs

Each visit is logged under the address it happened at, with the crew’s photographs attached to it, so a superintendent’s account of the week and the record agree without anybody assembling one.

Invoices, under the job they bill for

An invoice arrives with its own number, its total, and where it stands — sent, viewed, paid. It is filed under the address it bills for, in the same file as the proposal you awarded, so both figures are in front of you when you check one against the other.

Certificates and the dates on them

Every company working the job, the documents its trade had to file, what its cover is worth against your figures, and the date each policy runs to.

Give your bookkeeper a period

Pick a date range and download it. These files are written by the platform itself, so none of them waits on an account with anybody else. They are invoice and payment exports — a period of money in and out, not a pay application.

  • Detailed CSV.csv
  • General journal CSV (double-entry).csv
  • QuickBooks Online CSV.csv
  • QuickBooks Desktop IIF.iif
  • Xero CSV.csv

The trades

What each trade on the job has to file.

VendoRFP verifies companies in HVAC, electrical work and painting, and that is what you can put a scope out for on a job today. Each is asked for the insurance documents everybody files and, where its own work turns on one, the license or certification the trade cannot work without.

HVAC

Before it can price your scope

  • General liability
  • EPA 608 certification
  • Workers’ compensation

Electrical

Before it can price your scope

  • General liability
  • Electrical contractor license
  • Workers’ compensation

Painting

Before it can price your scope

  • General liability
  • Workers’ compensation

A W-9 is collected and verified in the same review.

Job-site trades

Mechanical, electrical and paint: which scopes go out for proposals here, and what a company has to hold before it can price one.

See the three scopes

Additional insured endorsements

What CG 20 10, CG 20 37, CG 24 04 and CG 20 01 each do, and exactly what the certificate check reads off the page.

Read the four forms

Subcontractor prequalification

The whole file a company assembles before it can price a scope, and the one paper form that sits apart from it.

Open the file

How a request works

One paint scope, from the day it is published to the day the invoice is filed under the job.

Walk one scope

A framing crew, a roofer, the concrete sub, the plumber: work outside that list is still recorded, documented and paid for here, under the address it belongs to, alongside the subcontracts that were put out for proposals. And the rest of what VendoRFP verifies — pool cleaning, landscaping, day porter and cleaning, gate and lobby attendants, pest control — is work bought at a finished building rather than on a job.

Construction

Put one trade out on one job and see what comes back.

Create an account, type in the floor your subcontract already states, and publish a scope the same day. VendoRFP reads the certificate of whoever answers.

Start freeHow verification works

General contractors, owners’ reps and the offices that qualify their subcontractors all want the same three things: companies insured to the standard the subcontract sets, priced answers to a written scope, and a record afterwards that a bookkeeper and an auditor can both read.

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