What a day.

During this bidding session I'm working with a completely different staff than the last time.

Previously all I did was take-off the projects and the rest of the staff would give me the values to assign to the units. That staff is no longer working on bidding.

We have been reduced from a staff of 7 or so people to a small group of 3, myself included. I'm no longer taking off jobs but now I'm contacting sub-contractors getting quotes, calling the owners for any addendum to the projects and sending out drawings and specifications to various bidders.

The big problem I'm having right now is that I'm forced to reduce the cost of mailing out of drawings and specifications. To do that I began e-mailing the drawings and specifications after I had them scanned into our system.

Unfortunately for me the size of the files can be large. Not everyone can receive a 10 megabyte file. Our consultant gave us a solution, a localized FTP server. The downside was the cost at $20,000.00.

Our company is watching costs and they are not willing to spend that kind of money on hardware for a site that might not get the use we're expecting. I got the idea of web-hosting. It seemed like a good compromise and it only cost $40.00 a month.

We got the go-ahead and arranged everything except for the site design. Our IT guy wimped out on setting it up because he didn't want to get involved with it.

That left me holding the bag. Once again I get the work that no one wants to do because they think it's beneath them (which I guess means there's no one lower than me in the company) or they don't have the time to do (which translates to "I'm not doing anything").

I set up the website to function but I'm not a web designer. I don't have the creativity to make a beautiful site. I don't have the technical knowledge to make it secure and up to date. All that considered I got a basic site thrown together.

All in all it's the best I can do, which is a far side more than anyone else did.

So instead of people giving me some kind of acknowledgement, I get criticism on the overall site structure, design and appeal.

That's when I decided to go home early.