Kestrel Mechanical stops reading notices and starts answering them
A mechanical contractor bidding on both sides of the border had two people scanning SAM.gov and CanadaBuys every morning. On Captivaq they read one shortlist and draft the first bid the same afternoon.
Nadia OkaforOperations Director, Kestrel Mechanical
Key results
Two morning readers back on project work
SAM.gov and CanadaBuys read together, one shortlist
First bid drafted the afternoon the notice arrived
“We stopped reading notices and started answering them.”
Nadia OkaforOperations Director, Kestrel MechanicalMeet Kestrel Mechanical
Kestrel Mechanical installs and services HVAC and building controls for government buildings in Ontario and upstate New York. Nadia Okafor runs operations and, until last spring, owned the bid pipeline.
Bidding on both sides of the border means two procurement systems, two sets of forms and two morning reads. Kestrel had grown into the work without ever fixing how it found the work.
“We bid in two countries, so we read two portals. Every morning, two people, before anything else.”
Two portals, two readers, one spreadsheet
One person read SAM.gov, the other read CanadaBuys. Both fed a shared spreadsheet. Notices were pasted in, argued over in a Thursday meeting, and mostly dropped.
The ones that survived still needed the package read from the top. Mandatory forms, site visit dates and the bilingual requirements on the Canadian side each lived in a different annex.
“Half of the morning was deciding what not to read. The other half was reading it anyway.”
The two readers were also the two people who ran projects. Every hour on the portals was an hour off a job, and the spreadsheet still missed notices that closed between Thursdays.
One profile for both countries
Captivaq read the company profile once. Nadia listed the trades, the provinces and states the crews cover, and the past projects on each side of the border. The profile is the same for both feeds.
“One profile, both countries. That was the whole setup.”
From then on SAM.gov and CanadaBuys were read on the same clock, and every notice from either scored against the same company. The Thursday meeting became a five-minute look at one list.
One shortlist, both countries
Nadia opens one list with the reasons attached. The first bid Captivaq prepared was for a controls retrofit at a federal building in Kingston, drafted the afternoon the notice arrived, with the annexes cited beside each requirement.
“The two people who did the reading are back on projects. The list comes to me, and the draft is half written when I open it.”
The spreadsheet is gone. Kestrel bids on more work in both countries, and the two morning readers have not opened a portal since.
