The full procurement chain, sealed and audited
The operational surface behind a construction procurement platform, from first tender to signed-off audit trail.
Tender decisions worth millions, made over email
A main contractor lets dozens of subcontract packages a year - MEP, fire protection, structural steel - each worth up to tens of millions of dirhams. In most firms the whole process still runs on email and spreadsheets.
Bids scattered across inboxes. Offers land at different times and criteria drift mid-tender, so no two are ever judged on quite the same footing.
No record you can defend. When a losing bidder or an auditor asks how the decision was made, the answer is a search through sent items.
Disputes get expensive. When it goes wrong in this region it goes wrong expensively - poorly administered contracts and unsubstantiated claims lead the causes year after year.
The Middle East's average construction dispute - the highest of any region surveyed.
How long a dispute in the region runs before it is settled.
The working platform, capability by capability
SealedWorks runs the whole tender - work packages, sealed bids, evaluation and award - with contractors, subcontractors and consultants each working from their own view of the same record. Every preview below is coded, not a screenshot: choose, filter, step through and compare.
Bill of quantities - three routes in
Import from a connected Causeway account with a selectable sync frequency, upload a CSV, or build the BoQ in the platform line by line. Whichever route, every bidder prices against the same standardised BoQ.
Like-for-like comparison, at any scale
Because every bidder prices the same lines, comparison is genuinely like-for-like - at eight line items or several thousand. Outlier pricing is flagged automatically against the line average.
Multi-round bidding, every round sealed
A work package is not limited to one round. Clarifications, revised submissions and best-and-final offers each run as a declared round - sealed and audited like the first, with the full round history preserved in the package audit timeline and recorded on the certificate.
Evaluation protocols and weightings
Reusable evaluation templates with adjustable criteria weightings, locked before the first bid arrives. Technical submissions are scored by invited evaluators - each restricted to their category of expertise - while commercial is compared objectively on the numbers. Overriding a system score requires a written justification, logged to the audit trail.
The vendor database
Subcontractor profiles with compliance-document tracking and expiry flags, four-tier categorisation, win rates and active-bid counts. Subcontractors join by invite and complete their own onboarding - or an existing approved-vendor database connects through the platform's API, so the external list stays the source of truth instead of being duplicated.
What the subcontractor sees
Subcontractors sign into their own view of the same record: active bids and how far each is priced, new invitations to accept or decline, deadlines, and their own performance - win rate, response rate and value secured.
Blind integrity, end to end
Blindness only counts if it holds everywhere. Bidder questions are routed as anonymised RFIs, and every upload is scanned for logos, company names and identifying keywords at the point of submission - identifying content is redacted, or the upload is rejected. Nothing reaches an evaluator carrying an identity.
Reporting on the record
Everything the platform witnesses becomes a data point. The report builder is template-driven over a whitelisted field library - pick a dataset, set the scope, choose the fields, generate. Every generated report carries a verification ID and SHA-256 hash, checkable through the same no-login verify tool as the certificate, and generating a report is itself an audit event. Sealed packages expose blind IDs only - identity fields stay out of the field library until reveal.
The integrity certificate
Every award closes with a Procurement Integrity Certificate: six verification checks - sealed-bid integrity, anonymous evaluation, criteria locked before bids, round compliance, evaluator consistency and a tamper-free audit trail - plus the assurance tier and the event count from the audit timeline. Anyone it is sent to can verify it independently.
The calls we made
We ran a large discovery programme with consultants and main contractors across the UAE - mapping the real workflows, the real pain points and the reality of how the industry actually tenders, not the version on paper. It shaped the final product in ways a written brief never could have.
The tendering process was modelled on established UK public-procurement principles - the Procurement Act 2023 and the Public Contracts Regulations before it: equal treatment, transparency, non-discrimination, proportionality and value for money. Sealed, anonymised bids and a locked audit trail are how those principles hold up in practice.
The brief was a contractor tool. We argued for one system that subcontractors and consultants sign into as well - a record only settles arguments when every party can see their part of it.
Feedback from contractors and consultants across the GCC reshaped how work packages and evaluators work. We removed the rigid, over-restricted paths to creating a work package so teams can move the way live projects actually run - and every decision is still logged to the audit trail. The flexibility construction needs, with the governance still intact.
We priced a hosting route at roughly a third of the cost and turned it down. Guaranteed UAE data residency was non-negotiable, so the platform runs entirely in-country.
Paul, the founder, led the main build and direction, with a second senior engineer alongside him on delivery. Discovery, build, then handover into supported operation - senior hands end to end. If discovery had shown the problem was process rather than software, we would have said so.
A challenged award is answered with a certificate, not a search through inboxes
Every package tendered through SealedWorks carries a complete record of how the decision was made, and anyone it is sent to can check it independently - a losing bidder, an auditor or the board.
Every criterion locked, bid opened, score entered and award issued is written to the certificate's tamper-evident audit trail - time-stamped and hashed, so the record cannot be quietly edited after the fact.
Packages quietly steered to mates, or awarded across undisclosed business relationships, leave a trail. Conflicts are declared and recorded, and a challenged decision is answered with evidence rather than assurances.
Run to the controls the sector's owners and auditors expect
The platform runs entirely in-country. Client data never leaves the UAE.
Every action is hashed with SHA-256 and chained, so the record cannot be altered after the fact.
Built and operated to enterprise controls, ready for owner and auditor review at any time.
