Bid Better, Work The Same Amount

Does SmartPref™ mean that crew members will be working more?

No.

While the minimum and maximum contractual limits remain the same, depending on the crewmembers’ seniority, he/she can now express and see the result of these preference choices in their bid, and be awarded a line value anywhere within the min/max limits.

The Online Advantage

We at Crewing Solutions firmly believe that the informed bidder is the better bidder. Crewmembers typically want just two things from a PBS system - to understand why they got what they got and to "know" they got the best schedule possible. For this to happen, awareness is required.

Conventional bid systems simply record your bid and at bid closing, return a result which may or may not meet your expectations. SmartPref™ lets you see the inventory of trips and available days off as it changes as crewmembers senior to you submit their bids. You then see how this affects your bid and you can react. The SmartPref™ engine continuously scans the latest bid information and returns and displays actual awards as if the bid had closed.

Increased Expectations

The assurance of expectations being met is further enhanced by the way bidding is done in SmartPref™. Upon entering a bid the crew member will see the 'window of opportunity' that the bid offers - that is your bidding results are presented from the best case scenario to the worse case scenario.

Bids are a combination of specific demands and generic demands associated with a relative level of preference/importance the crewmember can assign which allows SmartPref™ to 'protect' the most important elements of the bid. It is knowledge based and hence predictable. Instantly, the bidder is able to see how their bid may 'degrade' should certain of his choices become unavailable. He is able to find acceptable substitutes and formulate a new bid which has a high degree of expectancy.