Split into trade packages
Carve the master BoQ into per-trade tenders: create packages, attach the right documents, draft their details with AI, publish and manage deadlines from the cards or in bulk, and watch pricing roll back onto the master.
What you'll learn
- Create trade packages from BoQ lines or whole sections, and add lines to existing drafts
- Run every package action from its card: publish, set deadline, attach documents, edit markup, cancel
- Manage drafts in bulk: descriptions and terms, deadlines, and publishing
- Read the seven pricing states and fix unassigned, released, unconverted, and unbilled lines
A five-thousand-line master BoQ does not tender as one request. The MEP subcontractor should not scroll past your earthworks, and your earthworks bidder has no business seeing MEP rates. The buy-out runs trade by trade: each trade gets its own tender, its own suppliers, its own documents, its own deadline, and its own award.
The Split tab of the project cockpit is where that happens. Scale
Why this matters
Splitting is not clerical work; it is the commercial structure of your buy-out. The lines you group together decide which suppliers can bid, how comparable their bids will be, and how cleanly awards roll back onto the master. A package that mixes trades gets weaker bids from everyone; a package that matches how the market actually contracts gets sharp ones.
The Split tab at a glance
The tab has two halves. Packages on top: one card per package, with the three bulk actions, a Filter packages by status control (All, Draft, Tendering, Evaluating, Pending approval, Awarded, Canceled), a Search packages box, and Show canceled packages. Bill of Quantities below: the master bill by section, with a banner that reads Every BoQ line is in a package once the split is complete, or counts what is still unassigned until then.
Creating a package
Select the lines
The bill lists the master BoQ by section, each section showing N of N unassigned or All N assigned, with a running N sections still need packaging count. Select individual lines, use Select all within a section, or Select all unassigned for the whole bill. If a whole section is one trade (it usually is), Make this section a package does the selection in one move. A bulk bar shows N lines selected with Clear selection.
Lines move into a package whole; a line's quantity is never divided between two packages. If you need scope split more finely than a line, split the line itself on the master first. One package holds up to a stated maximum number of lines; when you reach it the bar says so, and you create this package before starting the next.
Create the tender
Assign to package (or New package) opens New trade package:
- Package name: name it by trade. "MEP Works", "Blockwork and Plaster", "External Landscaping".
- Type: RFQ for priced-bill tendering, RFP when you want a proposed approach evaluated alongside price.
- Currency: a package can tender in a different currency than the master. Bids in another currency are converted with your company's exchange rate; where no rate exists they are shown unconverted (see "Currencies" below).
- Copy commercial terms from the master: carries retention, advance payment, bonds, the measurement standard, and your supplier-facing terms into the package so every trade tenders on consistent terms.
- Copy the project questionnaire into this package: the master's questionnaire acts as the project-wide prequalification template; tick this to start the package's questionnaire from it, then add trade-specific questions on top.
- Markup override (%): optional. Leave it blank to inherit the master markup; set it if this trade carries a different margin. See Price, mark up, and bill your client.
Large selections are added in chunks with a progress line; if a package was created with fewer lines than you selected, the message tells you how many are left to add.
Add lines to a draft you already have
If the right package already exists and is still a draft, select the lines and choose Add to existing package instead. The dialog lists your draft packages only: a published package can only change through its own edit flow, so that its bidders are notified.
Finish the package like any request
The package is a real request in Draft. Open it to add its description and scope, reference documents, deadline, invited suppliers, and questionnaire. Everything from Create a Request applies unchanged: Q&A, amendments, approval steps, bids, AI evaluation and recommendation, and awarding all work exactly as they do on an ordinary request. Inside the package's wizard, Draft this package's description with AI drafts one package on its own.
For construction trades, the questionnaire step offers curated Prequalification banks (licensing, HSE, QA/QC, financial standing, references, insurance) so you do not write a prequal from scratch. See Add a Questionnaire.
Working from the package cards
Each card shows the package's status, line count, how many documents are attached, its markup (Markup 12% or Inherits master markup), and its tender facts: No bids yet or N bids received, Closes (date), Closing soon or Deadline passed, and Won by (name) once awarded. Open goes to the package's request page; Open in a new tab keeps the cockpit where it is.
The actions on a card:
- Publish package opens Publish this package?: invited suppliers are notified that the package is open for bidding, and you cannot un-publish it, though you can cancel it later.
- Set deadline opens Set the submission deadline for this one package; the deadline must be in the future.
- Attach documents opens the project document library so you can hand this trade exactly the specification sections, drawing sheets, or page ranges it needs. Covered in Manage project documents and drawings.
- Edit markup changes this package's markup override.
- Cancel package opens Cancel this package?. The package is canceled, its BoQ lines return to the unassigned pool ready to be packaged again, and any bids already received are kept but can no longer be awarded. A Reason (optional) is shared with the suppliers who were invited. Keep the package backs out.
Drafting and managing packages in bulk
Ten packages means ten descriptions, ten deadlines, ten publish actions. The cockpit batches all three:
Draft all package descriptions
Draft all package descriptions runs one AI draft per draft package, each aware of its own BoQ lines and, where you attached specification sections, of those sections. Before anything runs, the dialog states the total credit cost against your balance, which packages will cost more because they draft from documents, and how long the run will take, since drafts run one at a time.
Despite the button's name, a draft fills every empty commercial field, not only the description. For each package the dialog lists what it Will fill and what is Already set (kept), across eight fields: Description, Terms & conditions, Evaluation criteria, Payment terms, Incoterms, Delivery location, Quote validity, and Delivery tolerance. A field you already filled is never overwritten. Drafts queue up for review (Ready for review); nothing is saved until you Accept each one, and you can Regenerate, Retry, or Skip any of them. Closing the window cancels anything not yet finished without charging for it, and keeps what was already drafted for you to review.
Set deadline for all draft packages
Set deadline for all draft packages applies one New submission deadline to every draft in a single move. Published packages are never touched, and a package whose clarification deadline is later keeps its deadline rather than becoming inconsistent; the result message tells you exactly what was set and what was skipped, and why.
Publish all
Publish all opens Publish every draft package? and then submits every draft through its normal publish flow, approval routing included. Packages publish in the background; a Publish results list reports Published or Failed per package, and a failed one tells you to open it to see what is missing.
The AI drafter never touches a package's BoQ lines: those came from your master, and their link to the master is what makes pricing roll up. You also cannot re-import a spreadsheet over a package's BoQ for the same reason; updated workbooks go on the master.
How pricing rolls back onto the master
From the moment a package publishes, its lines report their state back to the master. Each master line shows one pricing state, and the strongest available price is used, in this order:
- Self-priced: you set your own rate on the line (see the pricing guide).
- Lump sum: the line sits inside a section the winning or leading bidder priced as one section price, so it has no per-line price of its own. The section carries the amount.
- Awarded: a supplier won the package; their rate is committed.
- Carried: a price kept from an earlier tendering round.
- Best bid: the leading submitted offer on a live package, not yet awarded.
- Awaiting bids: tendered, nothing submitted yet.
- Not tendered: not in any package and not self-priced.
Special line types (provisional sums, PC sums, dayworks) tender inside packages like any other line; the construction pricing reference covers how each is priced and evaluated. The Budget / Committed column keeps your own estimate next to what the current winning and leading prices add up to, with the variance. Only genuinely submitted bids count; a supplier's half-typed draft never leaks into your numbers. The How pricing works legend in the cockpit restates the order whenever you need it.
Currencies
A package can tender in a currency other than the master's. Bids convert to the master currency using your company's exchange rate. If a bid arrives in a currency you have no rate for, the cockpit does not invent one: the affected lines show an Unconverted (currency) chip, the card notes that its bids are shown unconverted, totals say how many lines they exclude, and a Some bids are in another currency banner offers Add an exchange rate. Once the rate exists, the lines convert and the totals close.
When a package comes back wrong: re-tendering
Not every tender lands the first time. A package can close with no bids, or with prices so far over budget that awarding it would be malpractice. The re-tender loop uses the same pieces you already know:
- Diagnose before re-tendering. No bids usually means the wrong suppliers, too short a deadline, or scope nobody could price; check the Invitations tab and the package's Q&A tab first. If the package just needs more time or a clearer scope, Set deadline or amending the package is cheaper than a fresh round.
- Free the lines. Release individual lines with Return to unassigned, or Cancel package to release everything it claimed at once. Released lines keep their place on the master BoQ; nothing about your client-facing scope changes.
- Re-cut and go again. Create a new package from the freed lines, this time with whatever the first round taught you: a different trade boundary, better invited suppliers, a longer deadline, or clearer specifications on the lines themselves. The new package tenders like any other, and its pricing rolls up the same way.
- Or keep the work. If the market's answer was "not at a sensible price", self-pricing the lines is a legitimate close (see Price, mark up, and bill your client): the line becomes closed scope at your own rate instead of waiting on a round three.
Where a price from an earlier round is still anchoring a line (shown as Carried), a newly awarded price simply outranks it; you never have to clean the old number out by hand.
Fixing the edges
Real buy-outs are not tidy. Three tools handle the edges:
- Releasing a line. Return to unassigned opens Return this line to unassigned?: the line leaves its package and returns to the unassigned pool, and suppliers invited to that package no longer see it. Lines claimed by an active package are locked against double-assignment (These lines are locked); release them or cancel the package to free all of its lines. A self-priced line cannot be selected for a package either: Clear rate first.
- Unbilled lines. When a subcontractor prices scope that was never on your master (a package line added during tendering), the Consolidated tab warns Priced scope that will not be billed and offers two fixes under Resolve: Add to my BoQ creates the master line, or Link to an existing BoQ line matches it to one already there. Adding is idempotent: adopting the same package line twice re-links rather than duplicating scope on your bill.
- The master grows, it never shrinks. After splitting, you can add lines to the master but not delete tendered scope out from under a package. Released lines stay on the BoQ.
A subcontractor bidding on your package sees a normal tender: the package's BoQ lines, scope, terms, the documents you attached to that package, and its questionnaire. They never see the master, the other trades, your budget, other suppliers' prices, or what the project rolls up to. Each trade competes only within its own package.
What good looks like
- Packages match real market trades, and the section structure of the master was built with that in mind.
- Commercial terms are copied from the master so no trade tenders on odd terms by accident.
- Every package has the documents its trade needs attached before it publishes, so the AI drafter and the bidders read the same specification.
- Draft descriptions and terms are AI-drafted, reviewed, and corrected, not accepted blind.
- The unassigned banner reads "Every BoQ line is in a package" before you tell the client the buy-out is covered, and every unbilled-line warning is resolved before export.
Next steps
- Manage project documents and drawingsAttach specification sections and drawing sheets to each package from one library.
- Review bids and AI ScoringEvaluate each package's bids with weighted criteria and a written recommendation.
- Price, mark up, and bill your clientSelf-price the rest, set markup and preliminaries, and export the bill.
- Run a construction projectThe full project picture: cockpit, KPIs, and outcome tracking.
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