RICSe-tendering.com hardly used – not ‘baffling’

Building today reports that the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors‘ e-tendering system has been used only 50 times in the 15 months since its launch. The institution is said to be ‘baffled’; its executive director Joe Martin remarks: “never underestimate the power of inertia.”

Drivers Jonas partner Mike Cuthbert is scornful of the RICS becoming a tender provider: “There are lots of well used e-tendering services. Why would anyone go to the RICS? I can’t believe that’s the main purpose of a professional institution.”

I hate to say “I told you so”, but … I told you so. When it was launched in October 2007, I said ricsetendering.com would struggle against existing e-tendering services offered by several of the established vendors of construction collaboration technologies (eg: 4Projects, Asite, BIW [my employer] and Sarcophagus). These, unlike the RICS system, allow tendering to be fully integrated with other electronic project information exchanges, and many project team staff use them routinely so don’t need additional training to use an external system.

Permanent link to this article: https://extranetevolution.com/2009/01/ricse-tenderingcom-hardly-used-not-baffling/

5 pings

  1. […] that the RICS should not have ventured into the electronic tendering market (see my recent post RICSe-tendering.com hardly used – not ‘baffling’ – I also commented on the original Building article). I have again responded to some of the […]

  2. […] some stand-alone tender applications also available (eg: the hardly used RICSeTendering.com – post; and the soon-to-be-launched Australian SaaS application Tender.ly – […]

  3. […] reports in Building magazine earlier this year take-up was not extensive (see my January 2009 post RICSe-tendering.com hardly used – not ‘baffling’ and the 14 February […]

  4. […] a stand-alone e-tendering platform, and it duly struggled to gain traction in its first two years (post). Other stand-alone UK solutions have also been launched – such as Asktobi (apparently due to […]

  5. […] Partly as a result, the RICS service was used just 50 times in the 15 months following its launch (post), with RICS tendering working party chairman Peter Sell forced to defend the under-used solution in […]

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