Plan Room FAQs

MBEX has a dedicated team of experienced reporters who seek out projects daily. In addition, architects, engineers and general contractors send us projects every day, so they can be sure the industry is aware of and can bid on the work.

We cover the entire five-state Upper Midwest region including Minnesota, Wisconsin, North and South Dakota and Iowa. We are also scouring city council agendas and minutes and planning and zoning commission agendas and minutes for any future commercial construction projects and providing those to our members in a monthly newsletter we call the Pre-bid Pipeline.

The majority of projects on the Exchange are public projects (by this we mean that the ultimate owner of the project is a public entity such as a school, city, county, airport commission and so on). Roughly 10% of the projects on the Exchange are private projects and that percentage is growing a little bit each year.

MBEX is a nonprofit industry trade association that has been around 137 years dedicated to serving our industry. It is owned and managed by members of the industry itself and exists solely in service to the industry. Both ConstructConnect and QuestCDN are privately held companies. In addition, MBEX offers unlimited users on the plan room, unlimited filters, unlimited downloads. 

Yes. As an industry nonprofit, MBEX gains its operating revenue through membership. There are two levels of membership – basic and premium. The vast majority of members take advantage of the premium services, which allows full access to the digital plan room and the ability to download project documents. For a more detailed comparison of basic versus premium membership, click here.

Absolutely. We’re certainly proud of our plan room and its ease of use. Contractors tells us every day, “I’ve tried them all and yours is far and away the best, easiest to use and most comprehensive.” But you will want to see that for yourself and a trial will provide that opportunity. If you want to set up a trial, please click here and our team will reach out promptly.

Great question. MBEX averages about 20-30 new projects every day and provides approximately 5,000 projects for the industry’s consideration every year. Obviously, we are subject to the economic conditions in the broader environment. But surprisingly, even in years of recession or economic challenge, commercial activity can remain relatively strong.

Yes. One of the highlights of the MBEX plan room is the flexibility of our filter system. You can create unlimited numbers of filters. In fact each of your users (and you can have unlimited users) can establish his or her own filters. Every night you will receive an email from MBEX with projects actively bidding that meet your filtered criteria. If different members of your staff have different filters established, their nightly email will directly reflect their filters.

You can establish filters by keyword, by Construction Specification Institute division or code, by specific products names, by geography and you can combine these. Regardless of how many filters you have established, you will only receive one nightly email that aggregates all of those results into a daily action plan for you.

We don’t filter by project dollar value simply because plan providers don’t always include estimated project costs for every project and we don’t want you to miss any opportunities.

There are no limits to the number of filters you can deploy. For example, some of our members have business development responsibilities assigned by geography and have members of their team create filters for projects in certain states or parts of states. Some of our members are manufacturers representatives or sales agents seeking to know which projects have specified their products or competing products. You can filter broadly or narrowly and bring those results into your daily email and onto your daily deskpad.

Each night, you will receive an email with all new projects entered into the system, as well as any project that meets your filtered criteria. In addition, your deskpad upon login will reflect all projects actively bidding as well as every project that meets your filters. Also, the system will link back to the exact location in the specification document where your key term is referenced. 

You can do either. You determine how you want to download the vital information you need (and it can be as PDF or TIF)

You don’t actually bid via the MBEX plan room. For each project we make it clear how bids are to be presented. But our role is to be the most accurate, responsive and easiest-to-use plan room to see projects upon which you may wish to bid.

Yes and we do this daily. Members call us regularly and ask us to put back up a project. We generally complete this within 5 minutes.

MBEX provides value for you in several ways. First, while not the majority, we do provide private projects on the plan room. Additionally, we are scraping the city council agendas and minutes and the planning and zoning committee agendas and minutes for commercial construction projects in their infancy (most of which are private). These we provide to you in a monthly newsletter called the Pre-Bid Pipeline. That enewsletter generally has 80-100 projects each month. Lastly, our member connections events are of great value and importance to the industry. If you want to meet general contractors or other trades to establish relationships and create business building opportunities, MBEX events are unparalleled.

There are two easy ways to add users, make company record changes, and select your specialties. The first is to login to the MBEX plan room and select the resources tab. The second is just to give us a call. We pride ourselves on being the humans behind the projects.

Your company can have an unlimited number of users for the plan room. In fact, we encourage this because then each user can have their own filters and nightly email, thereby ensuring they are delivered projects that are right on target. There is no extra charge for additional users.

You can see bidders on each of the projects on the plan room (of course they must be in the bidding phase. We also post projects that are in the pre-bid phase as well to provide insight and upcoming activity to members). You can contact bidders directly from our platform – it’s as simple as checking a box and sending an email. You may contact a single bidder, or multiple bidders with a quick one-button action.

We list all bidders that we are aware of on a project. Often, members will actually add themselves as bidders because they want the industry to know they are actively pursuing opportunities. We do identify members with a red M adjacent to their company name. We also provide substantial contact information for each bidder.

We do report on apparent lows and awarded contracts separately. If we can obtain bid tabs, we also provide those. Bid tabs are exceptionally helpful as you can then see where the various bids on a project landed for cost to see if you are high, low or right on target.

Yes you can. The companies you track will appear in your nightly email if they are active on current projects on the plan room. Many subcontractors and specialty trades like to know the activity of the General Contractors with which they often work.

Yes you can. Under the Resources Tab on the MBEX Plan Room Deskpad, you can search by company type. This will bring up a list of all the companies we have in our system who meet that company type (note: it’s often in the hundreds. The list is derived from all of the bidders that we enter daily for the thousands of projects we provide annually. You can click on each company to obtain greater detail, including contact information. You cannot, however, email them all globally (We’re sure you can understand why).