The COMPASS Recommendation Engine is a fully customizable tool designed to make it as easy as possible for you to decide which subcontractors you want to prequalify. You tell us how you pick subs now, and we build that into COMPASS to make accurate recommendations. A pre-configured version is available in your account, which you can modify to meet your specific risk requirements.
The COMPASS Recommendation Engine is built to help in multiple ways:
Identifies where subcontractors have incomplete or expired data based on your requirements and directly requests the missing data through COMPASS.
Highlights areas where subcontractors do not meet your standards, helping you focus your due diligence and sign-off procedures on those areas of weakness.
Benefit from recommended subcontractor capacity calculations, based on your risk preference.
Filter/search across any region to find subcontractors that we think you will decide to prequalify.
Even better, the COMPASS Recommendation Model can be modified over time to ensure that the recommendations evolve with your needs. Please contact your COMPASS Client Success lead for more information.
Phase 1: Data Collection
Having accurate and complete data is essential for making informed decisions about which subcontractors to work with. Reviewing subcontractor data often requires manually checking various forms and attachments to ensure everything is provided and up-to-date. Incomplete information—such as outdated financials, missing EMR letters, or incorrect W-9 forms—often results in additional back-and-forth with subcontractors.
COMPASS takes on the heavy lifting of data collection, allowing you to focus on decision-making. Our dedicated verification team reviews all attachments, ensures responses align with supporting documents, and flags any incomplete information. You define your required documents and data, and the COMPASS Recommendation Engine highlights any gaps. For subcontractors with incomplete information, you can send a list of missing items and request resubmission directly from the platform.
Completion Circles: Visual indicators for data completion. Full circles mean all required information is complete, while half-filled circles mean that something is incomplete or expired (like outdated financials, missing bonding letter, incorrect W-9).
Based on these indicators and your discretion, you can determine whether sufficient information has been provided to move forward to Phase 2: Review.
Completion Circles and Sending Missing Data Requests to Subcontractors
Phase 2: Review
Not all subcontractors require the same level of scrutiny, and not every team member needs to review every subcontractor. The recommendation engine helps focus your team’s efforts by routing subcontractors to the right reviewers based on their risk levels and highlighting areas that need attention. You define the criteria and risk factors that determine which reviewers or approval processes should be applied. For example:
Subcontractors with financial risks and limits over $5M require sign-off from your CFO.
Subcontractors with a history of bankruptcy require approval from both management and the operations team, who will verify references and conduct a background check.
Subcontractors with no issues can be approved with minimal or automated review.
The criteria typically revolves around financial ratios (e.g., debt-to-equity > 3, current ratio < 1.1), safety records (e.g., EMR > 1.25, RIR > 5), and business history (e.g., litigation history, less than 3 years in business).
Metric Circles: Visual indicators for identified risks. Full circles indicate no flags have been triggered, while half-filled circles indicate high-risk flags have been triggered.
Metric Circles and Choosing the Appropriate Approval Process Based on the Identified Risks
Review Outcome: Qualification Status and Contract Limits
To complete your review, use qualification statuses to indicate whether a subcontractor should be added to your roster, and set contract limits to define the size of projects they can handle.
Qualification Status
Qualified: The subcontractor meets all requirements and is added to your roster, ready to be used on future projects.
Qualified with Exceptions (QWE): The subcontractor meets most criteria and is included in your roster, but requires additional actions (e.g., parent company guarantee, joint checking, routine safety inspections).
Denied: The subcontractor does not meet critical requirements and should not be considered for future projects (e.g., past fatalities or poor performance reviews).
Contract Limits
Based on your review, determine the size of projects the subcontractor can handle (single contract limit) and the total amount of work they can manage across all projects (aggregate contract limit).
Single Contract Limit: Estimated based on factors such as working capital, revenue, equity, bonding limits, and past contract values.
Aggregate Contract Limit: Typically twice the single contract limit, representing the total value the subcontractor can handle across all projects.
List of Prequalified Subcontractors