How to register for PASSPort (and what actually delays you)

PASSPort is the system New York City uses for procurement. If you want to bid on work from a City agency - DDC, DEP, Parks, Sanitation, the School Construction Authority - you respond through PASSPort, and you cannot respond at all until your company is Filed in it.

Most of the delay contractors hit is not the paperwork. It is discovering, a week before a bid is due, that enrolment takes several steps and that one of them needs a signature from somebody who is out of the office.

The order things happen in

1. Get an NYC.ID. This is the City's single sign-on. One set of credentials covers PASSPort and other City systems, and you need it before you can request a PASSPort account.
2. Request a vendor PASSPort account. MOCS says it typically processes account requests in one to two business days. This is dead time you cannot compress, so start it before you need it.
3. Complete the Vendor Enrollment Package. In PASSPort, go to Profile > Vendor Profile. This is the long part.
4. Sign and submit it. Only then can an agency contract with you.

The enrolment package is four tabs

• Basic Information - your organisation's details.
• Contacts - who at your company does what.
• Disclosures - questionnaires about the organisation.
• Documentation - the files you have to upload.

The Disclosures tab is where schedules slip. Each Principal Owner and Officer has to complete their own Principal Questionnaire individually. You cannot fill these in on their behalf. If your company has four principals, that is four people who each need an account and each need to sit down and answer questions - and if one of them is a silent partner you rarely speak to, find that out now rather than the week a bid closes.

Know which status you are actually in

PASSPort shows a vendor status, and the difference between two of them catches people out:

• Draft - the package is incomplete.
• Ready to Submit - everything is entered, but an e-signature still has to be added. This is not done. A lot of contractors believe they have enrolled at this point.
• In Review - submitted; MOCS will come back to you if something is missing.
• Pending Parent/Controlling Entity - your parent or controlling company has to file too. If you are a subsidiary, this one can stall you for weeks through no fault of your own.
• Filed - done. Agencies can now initiate contracting actions with you.

To move from Draft to Ready to Submit, the Vendor Admin clicks Check Progress. Only a Signatory can add the signature, and one signature is enough.

Three roles, and they are not interchangeable

• Vendor Admin - full access.
• Signatory - enters information and can sign the package.
• Contributor - enters information only.

If the only person who can sign is a Contributor, nothing submits. Check the roles before you need them.

After you are Filed: be findable, then respond

Two more things are worth doing once you are Filed:

• Enrol in commodities. You pick codes from the NYC Commodity Classification Directory that describe what you actually sell or build. This is how agencies find you - an HVAC contractor who never sets commodity codes is invisible to the buyer looking for one.
• Respond to RFx. Solicitation responses are created and managed in PASSPort, and specific user roles are required to submit them - the same role trap as signing.

Separately, note that before a contract is registered with the Comptroller, the City requires further documents. Being Filed gets you to the starting line; it is not the last paperwork you will do.

What to do this week

If you intend to bid on City work in the next few months and you are not Filed yet, the useful order is: get the NYC.ID today, request the account today, and find out this week how many principals need questionnaires and who your signatory is. The parts that take real time are the ones that depend on other people.

Check this against the City's own pages

Procurement systems change, and MOCS updates its guidance. Everything above is drawn from the City's own documentation, and these are the pages to confirm against before you rely on any of it:

• MOCS - Getting started with PASSPort
• MOCS - Complete the PASSPort Vendor Enrollment
• MOCS - Enroll in Commodities
• MOCS - PASSPort FAQs
• MOCS Service Desk - for anything that is stuck

BusyBids is not affiliated with the City of New York and does not process registrations. We track what the agencies publish so you can see the work; the enrolment itself happens on the City's own systems.

See current opportunities

While your enrolment is in progress, you can see what is actually open: all current New York bids, or narrow it to your trade - HVAC, electrical, plumbing, general contracting.