Onvia-Demandstar - Plans & Specs for public-sector Construction Projects

In the previous post (which was about iSqFt), I mentioned “Onvia-Demandstar”.

OnVia-Demandstar is a technology company providing “bid and rfp” hosting and announcement services to city and county government agencies. Specifically, to the “procurement” or “purchasing” departments of city and county government agencies. I signed up for a “free” subscription to access and research Hillsborough County (FL) public bid/rfp announcements.

For this blog post, I selected a current procurement (by Hillsborough County) for the “construction” of a bridge rehab project.

Below, you see the “main” announcement of this project; basically, the announcement to prospective bidders:

Bid Identifier	Bid Status	Broadcast Date	Date Due	Name	Actions
ITB-C-0068-0-2011/MK	Active	12/6/10	2/1/11	WEST COLUMBUS DRIVE SWING BRIDGE REHABILITATION	Details, Planholders, Download/Order

After one clicks on “download/order”, it brings up what you see immediately below:

Request Bid Package

Agency Name: Hillsborough County BOCC

Bid Name: West Columbus Drive Swing Bridge Rehab

Bid Status: Active

Download Electronic Documents “for free” (this is one option)

Document Title	Size (KB)	Est. Download Time at 56K	Action
Bid Document Specs, VOLUME 1 OF 4	1,291.80	5 Min. 31 Sec.	Download
BID DOCUMENT SPECS - VOLUME 2 OF 4	23,270.33	1 Hrs. 39 Min. 17 Sec.	Download
Bid Document Specs, VOLUME 3 OF 4	14,692.80	1 Hrs. 3 Min. 41 Sec.	Download
BID DOCUMENT SPECS - VOLUME 4 OF 4	8,268.14	35 Min. 17 Sec.	Download
Plans 1 of 2	23,174.14	1 Hrs. 39 Min. 53 Sec.	Download
Plans 2 of 2	29,447.36	2 Hrs. 6 Min. 39 Sec.	Download
Sign in sheet	328.53	1 Min. 24 Sec.	Download
Addendum No. 1	1,253.06	5 Min. 21 Sec.	Download
Addendum No. 2	16.52	0 Min. 4 Sec.	Download
Totals	101,743 KB	7 Hrs. 14 Min. 7 Sec.

[Or, option 2, order (printed set of documents) By Mail]
Reproduction Cost	$344.12
Handling Cost	$0.00
+ Shipping Cost	(to be selected)

Okay, so now for the “big question”. If I want to order a set of hard-copy documents, who does the printing for that order? And, a second question, who benefits from the revenue ($344.12) generated by that print order?

You may find this interesting (I did); when I clicked on “planholders” for this construction project - and a few others - two companies repeatedly appeared as “planholders” – iSqFt and Onvia/Demandstar. Hmmm, I wonder why that is?