The Builder’s Guide to Modern GBQ

Most enquiries a builder receives are a sketch and a hope. A Modern GBQ invitation is different: the homeowner has already described the project, the Grace Estimation Method (GEM) has computed the engineered quantities with its working shown, and every line has been priced from published supplier offers or indicative market rates plus trade labour rates — each line says which. You are asked to respond to that scope — and every builder invited to the same project is responding to exactly the same one. The homeowner then reads the responses blind, numbers before names, so the quality of your answer is what carries the round.

What you price

an approved, GEM-structured scope — every line, quantity and excluded item

Ways to respond

Accept · Revised proposal · Request discussion · Decline

How you are compared

blind first — numbers before names

Your rating

starts at 5.00; only declining after selection lowers it

Where: Create account, then Organisations in the sidebar

Register with your email and password, pick your market (Australia or Egypt — it decides which Terms of Service and Privacy Policy apply, and each opens in a new tab so you can read it first), and agree to them. Then create an organisation with the type Builder, with a short code and a name. Because builders trade on the marketplace, creating the organisation also asks you to read and accept the Marketplace Agreement — the additional terms that govern invitations, responses and selection conduct. Every legal document is always readable at the Legal page, without logging in.

A new builder organisation starts as Pending verification. The Modern GBQ team checks it and marks it Verified — only then does it appear in the builder directory and become invitable. Until that moment the whole workspace is yours to set up (profile, capacity, members), and it says plainly that verification is awaited. The organisation page shows the current state; if verification is declined, the reason is shown there, and a Support ticket asks for the decision to be reviewed.

From the organisation’s page, add your teammates as members by their email address — they must already have a Modern GBQ account. Everyone in the organisation shares the same workspace, invitations, responses and history, and any active member can respond on the organisation’s behalf.

Where: Organisations → your builder organisation → Builder workspace

The workspace opens on four live figures:

Below them, Needs your attention queues the same things in the order to handle them — selections waiting on an acknowledgement first, then open invitations by closest deadline, each with a direct Respond, View or Review selection action — and Recent invitations keeps every project that has invited your organisation one click away, newest first, with its deadline, engagement status and your own status on it.

All engagements (also reachable from the organisation page) is the full record: every invitation with its Respond / Revise response / View action, every preferred-builder selection with its Acknowledge and Decline controls, and your rating with its history.

Where: Your profile, on the Builder workspace

Your organisation’s directory entry shows its name and code, star rating, verification status and stated capacity. Two of those are yours to edit right on the workspace: Capacity (how many concurrent projects you are taking) and Notes — they are how you signal what work you actually want. Verification is decided by the Modern GBQ team, not self-declared, so a homeowner can trust what it says — and the directory lists verified organisations only, so every builder a homeowner can invite has been checked.

Where: the invitation page, from the workspace queue

Invitations are issued against a homeowner’s builder-ready quote — an approved Detailed quote, or an approved Design quote for which architectural drawings exist. The homeowner — or anyone who manages the project with them — searches the builder directory and issues the invitations; the directory lists verified organisations only, so the checking happens on the builder’s side, once, rather than project by project. Every engagement carries a response deadline set from the platform’s response window (five days by default) — the invitation shows the exact deadline.

An invitation gives you everything needed to price seriously:

• The project and its site — suburb, region, postcode and country. The homeowner’s identity and street address stay private at this stage.
• The scope to price — the exact estimate version the homeowner approved: every included line with its quantity and pricing, the subtotal, tax and total, and any lines the homeowner explicitly excluded, listed separately so nothing is ambiguous.
• Drawings & documents — the architectural drawings, site plan and specifications the project team has chosen to share with invited builders, each downloadable from the invitation page. A Design-pathway scope is issued only once the project has architectural drawings on file; the project team decides which files to share, and anything they keep private never appears.
• The response deadline and the engagement’s current status.
• Your response history on this invitation — every version your organisation has submitted, kept in full.

Where: Your response, on the invitation page

Your response takes one of four forms:

Alongside the response type, the form gives you a Price revision figure and six written fields: Programme information, Notes, Qualifications, Exclusions, Proposed alternative materials and Proposed alternative construction methods. Use them — the homeowner reads exactly these fields, side by side with every other response, before any name is revealed.

For as long as the engagement is open for responses you can revise: the form pre-fills from your latest version, and submitting creates a new numbered version rather than editing the old one. Every version is kept, and the homeowner’s report always shows your latest. The window closes when the homeowner records their feedback on the comparison, at or after the deadline — after that the invitation is view-only.

The homeowner’s comparison report is anonymous at first: responses appear as Builder A, B, C… in a fixed order, with every figure and every written field visible but no names. Only after the homeowner records their feedback — a confirmation that they have read the blind report — are identities revealed, and only then can they select a builder.

This is deliberately in your favour if your offer is strong: a sharp, complete response from a newer organisation is read on exactly the same footing as one from an established name. What wins the blind round is the quality of the response itself.

Where: Preferred builder selections, on All engagements (and the workspace queue)

A selection lands in your workspace queue and your notifications the moment the homeowner notifies it. Two honest answers exist:

• Acknowledge — you confirm your intent to proceed. The engagement moves to Acknowledged, its final state on the platform: the contract is now yours and the homeowner’s to conclude directly, outside Modern GBQ.
• Decline, with a written reason — allowed, but this is the one act with a real cost: declining after being selected deducts half a star from your rating, and the event appears on your rating history with your reason. The homeowner can then select another builder from the same round.

A homeowner can also withdraw a selection, giving a written reason of their own; a withdrawal carries no penalty for you, and they may select another builder from the same responses.

Every builder organisation starts at 5.00 stars. Today exactly one thing lowers it: declining after being selected costs 0.5 stars per occurrence, each recorded on your rating history with the date, the change, the rating after, and the reason you gave. The rating can never fall below zero, and it is shown to homeowners in the builder directory and in your workspace.

Protecting it is therefore simple:

• Decline at the invitation stage, freely, whenever a project doesn’t fit — that costs nothing.
• Only respond Accept or Revised proposal on work you will actually take if chosen.
• Keep your capacity figure current so you aren’t invited into work you can’t do.

Where: Notifications and Support, in the sidebar

Selections and support updates land in the Notifications centre, with an unread badge in the sidebar, one-click mark-as-read (per item or all at once) and per-channel preferences you control. Today the In-app channel is live; Email and SMS can be switched on in your preferences but are not yet connected to a delivery provider, so nothing is sent through them yet. Check your workspace queue for deadlines — the response deadline is on every invitation.

Support is a real ticket system: describe the problem, give it a priority, track its status (Open → In progress → Resolved → Closed), and get notified when it’s resolved.

• Work the queue in its order. Selections to acknowledge, then nearest deadlines — the workspace already sorts your day for you.
• Respond before the deadline, even if briefly. Request discussion keeps you in the round; silence takes you out of it.
• Use the excluded-lines list. It tells you exactly where the homeowner expects separate treatment — address those explicitly in your exclusions or a revised proposal.
• Write for the blind read. Your response is judged before your name is seen — make the numbers, the programme and the qualifications carry the pitch.
• Revise rather than pad. A revised proposal with a clear reason reads far better in comparison than a single inflated Accept.
• Fill the alternatives fields when you have a better way. Proposed alternative materials and methods are read as expertise, not as deviation — that is what they are there for.
• Treat your rating as capital. It is slow to earn back and visible to every homeowner your organisation is put in front of.

These are planned and not yet available. Nothing in the rest of this guide depends on them.

• Attachments on responses — supporting documents alongside a response; today a response is its figure and its written fields.
• Uploading the documents behind verification — licence, insurance and registration evidence attached to your organisation; today there is no in-app upload, and a Support ticket is the way to ask what the team needs.
• Email and SMS delivery of notifications, once the providers are connected, and an in-app two-factor enrolment screen.

• Modern GBQ does not process payments, hold funds, or create contracts — responding to an invitation, or being selected, creates no contractual relationship through the platform.
• During the blind phase you are anonymous to the homeowner, and their identity and street address are withheld from you — the symmetry is the point.
• Declining a selection requires a written reason and costs rating; declining an invitation costs nothing.
• The figures you are shown are estimates prepared with the Grace Estimation Method — the scope you price against, not an offer from anyone.
• The Marketplace Agreement you accepted at organisation creation governs marketplace conduct; it and every other document are always readable at the Legal page.