"Inefficient  procurement and haphazard buying procedures are costing the UK building and construction sectors millions of pounds every year", claims Will Odling, managing director of specialist e-procurement company Inqizit.

He believes there has always been a focus on value and price, but not on making the buying process itself more efficient. "We  drive for the best deals, but spend too much on admin and processing in procurement."

Having spent over 25 years in the construction sector since his initial training as a quantity surveyor, Odling had become increasingly frustrated at the inefficient ways in which the industry sourced materials and sub-contracted work.  This led him to develop Inqizit, an online tendering and purchasing system, which aims to take the pain out of selective tendering procurement.

"For consumers, buying and selling over the internet has become commonplace and simple.  But traditional industries such as building and construction have lagged behind," said Odling.  "High speed internet and fast online transaction processing models mean that business can now be transacted in ways that were just not possible a few years ago. I tried to find a simple online system for scheduling and buying building materials and subcontract services using the much favoured tendering method and failed.  There just wasn't a system available to meet day to day needs. So over the past eighteen months I have developed Inqizit to meet this need.  I believe that procurement administration costs could be reduced by as much as 50% using a system such as Inqizit."

Inqizit has been designed in such a way that users can easily build up an electronic bill of materials or schedule of works for any building project, large or small, and send this out for tender.  The beauty of the system is that it uses an innovative way to draw on Inqizit's unique integral library of tens of thousands  of standard descriptions, making inquiry creation very fast and effective.

"Inqizit has the potential to revolutionise the way routine tendering is done in the industry.  Margins are always tight in this business and any way in which costs can be taken out of the supply chain will mean increased profits," said Odling. "There are around 176,000 building companies in the UK with an average of 6 employees. If adopting smarter buying systems saved each one just £50 per week, that's a potential £450 million opportunity each year. So I appeal to builder and developers to open their minds to a really easy way to work smarter to save time and money. Give Inqizit a 'road test' and you'll be surprised at what it can do for you".