When it comes to transparency and a level playing field in the construction industry, few things are as important as closed envelope bidding.

If you are one of the contractor companies that love to use this feature, here is how to enable it in BidWork.

Once you decide to create a new project, you simply go to Your Projects page and click New Project.

Then, once you populate all the mandatory fields, you simply scroll all the way down and check the box that is called Enable Closed Envelope Bidding For This Project.

Enabling this option will prevent access to quotes before the return date and time have passed.

The good thing is that, if you change your mind, you can change this setting in the Project Details page. Once you are on the Project Details page, scroll all the way down and click Edit.

Then you simply scroll down again, click or unclick the Closed Envelope option and click save in the end.

Be mindful, however, that once you issue the first work package, you won't be able to change this option again.

When you enable the Closed Envelope bidding feature, you then won't be able to download quotes for the work packages in that Project until the return date and time have passed.

That means, once you click on the company to preview Quote Details on the right side of the screen, this is what you will see:

Also, if you go to the Quotes Received tab on the project level, the Download all button is not clickable, because the return date and time hasn't passed for both of the work packages you can see on the screenshot below:

Then, once the return date and time have passed, you can click on the company to preview Quote Details and you will be able to download the quote.

Also, after the return date and time have passed, you can go to the Quotes Received tab on project level and you will be able to click the Download All button.

However, the system will download only the quotes for the work packages whose return date and time have passed.