County procurement to adopt Bonfire e‑procurement platform to modernize solicitations and contract tracking

Suwannee County procurement staff said Jan. 7 they are moving forward with Bonfire, an e‑procurement and contract-management platform provided by Uni Solutions, and will continue to post notices through DemandStar.

Procurement staff (Miss Freeman) said the platform will automate parts of the county's manual solicitation process, publish solicitations to vendors who register and provide contract-management tools to track awards through project completion. "Bonfire will help us automate our current manual process... It will help to expedite solicitation creation, working with us to set up templates for standard solicitations," Freeman said.

Freeman said vendors who register for the county on Bonfire will receive notifications when Suwannee County posts solicitations; there is no fee for vendors to register unless they choose a paid premium service offered by Bonfire. "The only time there is any kind of payment that a vendor has to do is if the vendor is actually signing up for a premium subscription with Bonfire... So that's not any kind of fee to subscribe to us specifically on Bonfire," Freeman said.

Staff said the county will still meet statutory newspaper‑publication requirements and will continue to accept paper bids from local vendors that prefer not to submit electronically. Commissioners called the platform a potential way to increase vendor competition and help local businesses avoid missing solicitations.

Why it matters: County staff said the change should improve vendor outreach, speed solicitation setup and help county staff manage contract lifecycles and compliance. Procurement staff said the county will announce when the system is live and provide guidance for vendors to register.