The loop

The same loop every morning

Eleven steps from a federal notice being published to a bid leaving your desk. Six of them are Mandra’s. Five are yours, and the five are the ones that commit your business to anything.

1. Step 1

   Mandra

   The morning pull

   Every new federal contract notice published on SAM.gov, nationwide, pulled overnight. Not a search you saved; the whole day’s feed.

2. Step 2

   Mandra

   Your profile filters it

   The set-asides your business holds, the NAICS and PSC codes you work under, the states where you take work, the largest contract you will bid. What fits is on your list. A notice with no stated place of performance, or one spread across several states, is shown to everybody — an unknown is not a reason to hide work from you.

3. Step 3

   You

   The unread list

   You open the laptop and the day is already sorted. Titles, agencies, deadlines, set-aside, where the work is, and how many days are left. Enough to throw most of them out without reading anything.

4. Step 4

   You ask, Mandra reads

   Read it

   One button. Mandra downloads the attachments the contracting officer posted and reads them. One notice is one read, all attachments included, however many there are. The cost is on the screen before you press it.

5. Step 5

   Mandra

   Our read, and the requirements

   Scope, value, bonding, self-performance, site visit, Q&A cutoff, submission method, required forms, page limits, evaluation criteria, contracting officer. Then the checklist of what the notice requires of you. Then the panel saying what the model was unsure about.

6. Step 6

   You

   Pursue or skip Human gate

   The first gate. Skip it and Mandra keeps your reason and does nothing else. Pursue it and the rest of the workflow opens. Mandra does not decide this, and it does not nudge.

7. Step 7

   Mandra finds, you judge

   Subcontractors

   A shortlist of firms local to where the work is performed, in the trade you name. Firms listed as SDVOSB or VOSB are surfaced where that matters, because a similarly situated sub counts toward your own self-performance share. Contact details are looked up from the firm’s own website, on request. Where a detail is not found, it says not found. It is never invented.

8. Step 8

   Mandra drafts, you send

   Outreach

   An email and a call script per firm, written for this notice: a mandatory site visit asks the sub to attend and confirm, a drawings-only job asks for a price off the documents. Both carry the quote link. There is a copy button and nothing else. Mandra has no mail server and no phone.

9. Step 9

   You send it, the sub fills it in

   The quote link

   One link per sub per notice. They open it on a phone, see the scope, the place, the site visit and their deadline, and put in a number, what it covers, what it excludes, how long it stands and whether they will attend. They can attach files. They see nothing else — not your price, not the other subs. The link expires when the solicitation closes and you can revoke it sooner.

10. Step 10

    You set it, Mandra computes

    The price

    The quotes, your own costs, markup, bond. Mandra keeps the self-performance percentage in front of you as the numbers move, with the materials exclusion applied. What the percentage has to be is a matter of the clause in your solicitation; what it currently is, is arithmetic, and that part is ours.

11. Step 11

    You

    Approve, then submit Human gate

    The second gate. You approve, and only then is the package marked ready. Mandra generates the documents. You submit them, in whichever portal this solicitation names. Mandra has no account on any of them.