How Ada County Highway District Automated the Bid Procurement Process with Laserfiche
Contributed by:Misty Perry, Information Records Administrator, Ada County Highway District
Ada County Highway District (ACHD) is the only organization of its kind in the United States. ACHD is responsible for all short-range planning, construction, maintenance, operations, rehabilitation and improvements to Ada County’s urban streets, rural roadways (excluding state highways) and bridges. Most construction projects must go through a bid procurement process that results in a contract. Here is how Laserfiche was able to streamline this process.
Legacy process
Before ACHD implemented Laserfiche Workflow, the bid procurement process was cumbersome and paper heavy. The contract administrator would print out the bid packet (which ranges from 100 to 400 pages) and physically walk around the building obtaining signatures. The signed bid packet would then have to be scanned back into the system. Laserfiche Workflow allows the whole process to be automated.
The new automated process
Now, as soon as the bid packet and contract is ready, it is imported into Laserfiche by the contract administration department. Laserfiche Workflow is invoked immediately. This workflow:
- Moves the bid packet to a folder where it awaits supervisory approval. The supervisor is notified by email of a new bid packet for his review and approval.
- If the supervisor doesn’t approve the bid in four hours, Laserfiche Workflow sends him a follow-up email reminder.
- Next, a different series of actions takes place depending on whether the manager approves or disapproves the bid packet.
- If the manager approves the bid packet, it is routed through the deputy director and contracts administrator office. The finalized bid packet is sent to the records management folder where retention is automatically applied.
- If the manager disapproves the bid packet, it is also routed to the deputy director and contract administrator’s office. The contract administrator must revise the bid packet. After the bid packet is revised, the contract administrator updates the CAO Approval Status field to “revised.” This action triggers Laserfiche Workflow to send the bid packet back to the manager and deputy director.
Here is what this workflow looks like:
Benefits of Laserfiche
Automating the bid procurement process with Laserfiche has resulted in the following benefits for ACHD:
- All reviewers and approvers are now notified by email immediately when they have a new bid packet to review. The manager and deputy director have access to each other’s folders, so if one of them is out of the office the other can approve for both. The administrative assistant is copied on all email notification so she can contact one or the other if a particular approver is out of the office.
- All bid packets are moved to the records management folder automatically when they are approved. Retention is instantly applied. This saves the records administrator time and effort and reduces the amount of space needed for storage. This also saves time for our Laserfiche scanner in not having to scan the approved bid packet into the system. Contracts can also be accessed whenever they are needed.
Get started with automating procurement within your organization today by downloading this free guide.
