Written so anyone can follow — make your first bid in about an hour.
A bid is a paper that tells a customer how much money it will cost to do their job. Think of it like a price ticket for a big project.
When someone wants to build something — a school, a hospital, a train station — they ask companies like MyKyah to send a bid. The customer reads all the bids that come in and picks one.
Your job is to make the bid right. MyKyah helps you do that. This guide walks you through it from the very first click.
Three things to have ready:
Got all three? Good. Let's go.
@mykyah.com).At the top of the screen, look at the big toolbar. Find the button that says .
Click it. A blank bid opens. The screen changes to a form with lots of boxes.
You'll see a list of boxes. Take your time. Fill in each one:
| Box | What to type |
|---|---|
| Project Name | What the job is called. Example: Sutter Health TI Building C |
| Project Location | Where the building is. Example: Sacramento, CA |
| Prepared For | The company asking for the bid. Example: Turner Construction |
| Bid Due Date | When the bid must be done. Click the calendar and pick the day and time. (This one matters — it powers the deadline reminders below.) |
| Estimator | Your name. Pick from the drop-down list. |
| Salesperson | The MyKyah salesperson on the deal. Pick from the list. |
Below that, you'll see boxes called Disciplines. These are the kinds of work the job needs. Check ONLY the ones that match your job:
Click Next at the bottom of the page. You'll see a big box that says "Drop files here or click to browse."
You can add more than one file if the job has multiple drawing sets.
Click Next again. You'll see the same kind of box.
Click it, find your specs PDF, click Open. Wait for the green check.
Click Next until you see the green button light up at the top of the page.
Click START.
Now MyKyah goes to work. It will:
This takes a little while — sometimes a few minutes, sometimes longer for a big job. You'll see messages on the screen telling you what it's doing right now.
When it's done, you'll see a green message that says "Analysis Complete."
Now the most important part. You see the results, and YOU double-check the robot's work. A robot is smart, but it can still miscount — that's why a person always checks.
Click the button at the top. A big window opens with tabs on the left side. Visit each tab in order:
A summary of everything. Look at:
A one-page printable summary. Read it. If anything looks wrong, fix it on the regular wizard steps.
Tells you what's IN the job and what's NOT.
Lists things that could go wrong later and cost extra money. Click Auto-Detect from Spec to get the robot's list, then add anything YOU noticed that worries you (a short description, how likely it is, a dollar guess, and how you'd fix it).
Shows ways to make the bid cheaper. Click Generate from BOM — the robot suggests swaps like "use a cheaper camera here." Keep the good ones, delete the bad ones.
If you know what other companies are bidding, type their prices here. MyKyah shows if you are LOW, MID, or HIGH compared to them.
These tabs — Schedule, Procurement, Project Checklist, Submittals — are for after the bid is won. Don't worry about them yet.
When you're done checking, close the Workbench with the X in the top right.
Always save before you walk away.
MyKyah auto-saves every few minutes, but you can also click the button at the top to save on purpose. You'll see "Saved at 2:34 PM" in the corner when it works.
When you think your bid is done, the manager (Tony) needs to look at it before you send it.
For really big bids — or any public-works job — use the Approval Chain (Admin → Compliance & Workflow → Approval Chain). It has four rows: Estimator → Tony → Allan → President. Each person changes their row to Approved as the bid moves up. The header reads IN REVIEW (yellow) until everyone signs off, then turns APPROVED (green).
Almost done. Two steps.
You did it. 🎉
Normally a GC emails you a job and asks for a bid. But MyKyah can also go find jobs for you. This is called the Bid Board.
If your boss has turned it on, you'll see a button at the top called (it has a little radar icon). Here's how it works:
The scariest mistake in bidding is missing the due date — or sending a bid the morning it's due without noticing the city changed the rules yesterday (an "addendum"). MyKyah watches your back.
When a bid you started from the Bid Board gets close to its due time, MyKyah does two things:
If your bid is for a public-works job (school district, city, state, federal), you have a few extras to take care of. They're all under Admin → Compliance:
Many public bids require a percentage of certified small / minority / disadvantaged suppliers. Open DBE / SBE / MBE, list your suppliers and their cert types. The page turns green if you hit the goal, red if not.
The GC needs a Certificate of Insurance. Open COI Generator, fill in the GC's name and address, click Print Broker Request, and send it to your insurance broker.
Public bids usually need a bid bond (often 10% of the bid amount). Open Bid Bond — the amount is auto-calculated. Click Print Bond Request and email it to your surety agent.
After you win a CA public-works job, you have 5 days to send a DAS-140 form to the apprenticeship committee. Open DAS-140 / 142, click Generate Cover Letter, and mail it with the DAS form from dir.ca.gov.
Open Workbench → Dashboard and check the device counts. If a number is off, the best fix is on the wizard steps: make sure you uploaded the right drawing pages, the correct disciplines are checked, and the device schedule pages are included. Re-run the analysis. Still off? Ask Tony before you send it.
The plans are probably scanned pictures, not vector PDFs. MyKyah shows a red rejection box with a button called OCR Recover. Click it — the robot will try to read the scanned image and pull out the device labels.
The robot is busy with other people's bids. Wait a few minutes and try again. It will still work — just a little slower.
You checked Audio Visual on Step 3 but the drawings don't actually show any AV stuff. Go back to Step 3, uncheck Audio Visual, and try again.
Open Workbench → Dashboard and look at the breakdown. Then check the AI Discrepancy view — it lists places where the robot's numbers don't match the sanity check. Ask Tony to look before you send it.
Click at the top, pick your project from the list, and everything comes back. MyKyah auto-saves every few minutes — you almost never actually lose work.
Construction has its own language. Here's what the most common words mean:
| Word | What it means |
|---|---|
| Bid | The total price you give to the customer. |
| Proposal | The pretty Word document that contains the bid. |
| Plans | The drawings of the building (floor plans, ceiling plans, riser diagrams). |
| Specs | The rulebook for the building (the written part). |
| Addendum | An update to the plans or specs the architect sent after the original. The deadline reminders watch for these. |
| Solicitation | The official "we want bids" posting from a city/school/agency. The Bid Board reads these. |
| BOM | "Bill of Materials" — a list of every part needed. |
| GC | "General Contractor" — the company that builds the whole building. We bid TO them. |
| Owner | The customer who pays for everything (school district, hospital, etc.). |
| RFI | "Request For Information" — a written question you ask the GC when something's unclear. |
| Submittal | A package showing what brand of stuff you'll use, sent before installation. |
| Markup | The extra money added on top of cost. That's our profit. |
| Contingency | Money saved for "just in case" surprises. |
| Prevailing Wage | A higher hourly pay rate the government requires on public-works jobs. |
| NIC | "Not In Contract" — work that's NOT our job. |
| By Others / By EC | Another contractor (or the electrician) does this part, not us. |
| DBE / SBE / MBE | "Disadvantaged / Small / Minority Business Enterprise" — certified small suppliers public bids often require. |
| Scope | What the job covers (and what it doesn't). |
| CO | "Change Order" — when the job changes after work starts. Extra paperwork, extra money. |
| VE | "Value Engineering" — making the bid cheaper by changing what gets installed. |
| FACP | "Fire Alarm Control Panel" — the brain of the fire alarm system. |
| IDF / MDF | The closets / rooms where network equipment lives. IDF = small, MDF = big main one. |
The first bid takes the longest. The second is faster. By the fifth one, you'll feel like you've been doing this forever.
Everyone here was new once. Ask questions. Mess up. Fix it. That's how you learn.
Good luck.