Caltrans Office Engineer
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Caltrans Electronic Advertising

Beginning April 5, 2010, all of our projects will be using an e-advertising process. This means that if you want to bid the project, you'll have to do a few things differently, and we'll be doing things a bit differently.

Central to everything is getting a Caltrans Connect account. The reason you need a Connect account is so we can maintain a planholder's list and notify the right people when we have addenda. Signing up for a Connect account is quick and easy.

If you have a Connect account, sign in, and you're done. Your computer will stay logged in, unless you manually log out. If you don't have an account, creating one is quick, free, and easy. Click the link to register.

Fill in the information for your company. Make sure that for the address, you enter the full shipping address where you'd like documents to be sent to you. An email address is required for verification purposes. Your username must be unique to our system, so if you're with a certain company and another estimator is already using the company name as their login, you need to choose another. Click Register account to complete the process.

You've got mail! Check your email or a message from our registration system. Click or copy the link to verify your account. From here, you can log into our system.

Once you've logged into our system, your computer will stay logged in, until you choose to log out. We're now ready to order bid books. Click on the "Advertised Projects" link shown on the left.

When you find a project that you want to bid, you'll start seeing the "Order Bid Book" link showing up on contracts after April 5. If you're not logged into Connect, you'll be directed to the Caltrans Connect page, where you can either log in or create an account. If you are logged in, you're almost done ordering a bid book. Note that every project also has a link for the contract plans and special provisions. All projects have these available to anyone that wants to check out a project. We have also started publishing all our plan sets in PDF format, which should make things easier on everyone.

You'll be prompted to verify your business name and shipping address. If the address is incorrect, there is a link to correct it. If the address is where you want the bid book shipped, click the link. You'll get an email verifying your order, and your bid book will be sent via overnight mail to the address you specified.