As a national Electrical Contractor doing work in a variety of industries we get inundated with RFP's for projects all the time that we have no interest in bidding on. So many in fact that actually reviewing them all is basically impossible. It would be great to have the option to more effectively filter the bid invites we receive to cut out the spam. I am aware of the notification block feature but that's really only a stopgap solution, it does not filter the bids on the bid board so you still have to go through them there, and identifying every company you need to block is impractical. I am also aware of the automatic tags which helps sift through the list but the sheer volume of RFP's still means that reviewing them all is impractical and it doesn't solve for the barrage of email notifications that makes it hard to identify relevant and important updates on projects you are interested in or actively bidding on.
A better solution would be to provide a subcontractor the option to only receive RFP's from GC's they have specifically selected, IE: a whitelist for bid invitations. A subcontractor could use the same UI currently in place for the notification block but instead of simply blocking notifications, it blocks the RFP's entirely and reverses it so only GC's that are specifically added to the list are able to send bid invitations. Including a feature to allow GC's to request to be added to the whitelist would be great, and you can leave the notification block option in place if you have a GC you want to allow onto the whitelist so you get the RFP's but not be notified. We have some where that would be a great option to have as a sort of middle ground. You won't get spammed but when reviewing your bid board you'll still be able to review them and opt in if that specific RFP is a good fit for you.
For bonus points leaving the "unfiltered" version of the bid board in place as an option to view would be great for those times when you need to go fishing for more projects or exploring other GC's to partner with and build relationships. Don't have any projects on the bid calendar, you can hop over to your unfiltered RFP list and cherry pick out some project to fill the schedule and potentially expand the network and service area in the process, still without being fully subjected to the torrent of RFP's coming in.
I think this would be a great way to address the spam issue without sacrificing the ability to access more bids if desired and allow your team to focus on the platform notifications that are valuable and relevant without sifting through a bunch of spam.
Also, if you are a GC reading this thinking you DON'T want your subs to be able to block your RFP's consider that many subs simply ignore almost all BC emails and notifications as a result of this spam. Reducing the spam would actually improve the odds that you are able to connect with quality subs and your RFP's won't go ignored or unanswered since the subs are spending so much less time filtering through the competing emails from other competing GC's or undesirable projects.
