Level subcontractor bids. Surface scope and pricing risk. Defend the award.
Bid Reasoner reads the 5–15 sub bids you receive on every package, levels them against your bid package scope, flags exclusions, missing scope, vague clauses, and unbalanced unit prices — and generates the award memo and handoff documents when you decide.
or reserve a founding pilot slot →
| Bidder | Raw bid | Normalized | Risk | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Meridian Pipe & Precast | $1,284,600 | $1,311,450 | Low risk | Leveled |
| Bluffline Excavating | $1,192,300 | $1,268,900 | Medium risk | Leveled |
| CRV Underground | $1,349,900 | $1,352,400 | Low risk | Leveled |
| Harlan Sitework | $1,108,750 | $1,301,200 | High risk | In review |
| Line item | SOW qty | Meridian | Bluffline | Harlan |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 603.02 — 24-inch RCP culvert | 1,840 LF | $118.00 | $112.50 | ●$1.00 |
| 603.05 — 36-inch RCP culvert | 620 LF | $164.00 | $158.25 | ●$1.00 |
| 604.11 — Precast drainage manhole | 22 EA | $4,850.00 | missing | $5,400.00 |
| 605.03 — Underdrain, 6-inch perf. | 3,200 LF | $14.75 | $13.90 | $16.80 |
| 620.01 — Mobilization | 1 LS | $64,200 | $59,600 | $148,000 |
Download award package (.zip) — 15 documents
Sample data — fictional bidders on a fictional drainage package.
Built for GC sub-bid leveling, not owner bid tabs.
Owner bid tabs compare prime bids on one standard form. Sub bids don't arrive that way — and that's the problem this product exists for.
Owner-side bid tabulation
- Prime bids submitted to an owner on one standard bid form
- Every bidder prices the identical item list — comparison is arithmetic
- Public unit-price results, published after letting
- No exclusions to catch, no scope to reconcile
GC-side sub-bid leveling
- 5–15 sub proposals per package, each in its own format — PDF, Excel, email
- Exclusions and qualifications buried in the fine print
- Scope coverage differs bidder to bidder — the low number is rarely the whole number
- Compare every sub against the same scope, then award with a record your team can defend later
From bid package to defensible award.
One path through the package. Every step leaves a record.
Upload the bid package
Drop in your ITB scope, plans, and addenda. Line items and quantities become the leveling baseline every sub bid is measured against.
Collect sub bids
Invite subs through the portal or forward what's already in your inbox. PDF, Excel, Word, CSV, or ZIP — each proposal is extracted and checked.
Normalize to the same scope
Every bid is mapped to your line items. Exclusions, plugs, and missing scope get priced so totals are apples-to-apples.
Review risk flags and evidence
Deterministic checks flag unbalanced unit prices, outliers, and front-loaded mobilization — each with a citation back to the bid document.
Compare under decision modes
Rank the field under seven decision modes. You decide — overrides are expected, and captured with a category and reason.
Award and hand off
Generate the award letter, subcontract draft, award memo, and the full handoff package in one click.
Real screens, not marketing cards.
Bid Inbox, sub bid intake, Leveling Matrix, risk findings, Decision Workbench, clarifications, award and handoff — the same surfaces your estimators work in. Sample data shown throughout.
Every bid, one inbox, status at a glance.
Every sub bid received across every project lands in one place — no more digging through email chains on bid day.
- Raw and normalized totals side by side, so leveling adjustments are visible
- Addenda acknowledgment, document completeness, and exclusion counts per bidder
- Extraction confidence and risk band on every row
| Bidder | Raw bid | Normalized | Submitted | Addenda | Docs | Excl. | Extraction conf. | Risk | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Meridian Pipe & Precast | $1,284,600 | $1,311,450 | Jul 14, 2:41 PM | Addenda ✓ | Complete | 2 | high conf. | Low | Leveled |
| Bluffline Excavating | $1,192,300 | $1,268,900 | Jul 15, 9:06 AM | Addenda ✓ | Incomplete | 5 | high conf. | Medium | Leveled |
| CRV Underground | $1,349,900 | $1,352,400 | Jul 14, 4:58 PM | Addenda ✓ | Complete | 1 | high conf. | Low | Leveled |
| Harlan Sitework | $1,108,750 | $1,301,200 | Jul 15, 11:52 AM | 1 of 2 | Incomplete | 4 | high conf. | High | In review |
Subs submit clean bids without an account walkthrough.
A magic-link portal walks each sub through four steps, so what reaches your inbox is complete and comparable.
- Accepts PDF, Excel, Word, CSV, and ZIP — whatever the sub already has
- Pre-submit checks catch missing addenda acknowledgments and bid bonds before you do
- Required fields mean no more calling subs back for base-bid clarity
- ✓Addendum 2 acknowledged
- ✓Bid bond attached
- !2 required fields missing — tax status, schedule commitment
Same scope. Same line items. Every bidder.
The Leveling Matrix maps every proposal to your bid package line items, so a missing manhole or a $1.00 pipe price is visible in one glance.
- Lowest unit price highlighted per line
- Unbalanced unit prices (≤ $1.00) marked inline
- Lines a bidder didn't quote — that peers did — called out as missing
| Line item | SOW qty | Meridian | Bluffline | CRV | Harlan |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 603.02 — 24-inch RCP culvert | 1,840 LF | $118.00 | $112.50 | $124.00 | ●$1.00 |
| 603.05 — 36-inch RCP culvert | 620 LF | $164.00 | $158.25 | $171.50 | ●$1.00 |
| 604.11 — Precast drainage manhole | 22 EA | $4,850.00 | missing | $5,120.00 | $5,400.00 |
| 605.03 — Underdrain, 6-inch perf. | 3,200 LF | $14.75 | $13.90 | $15.20 | $16.80 |
| 620.01 — Mobilization | 1 LS | $64,200 | $59,600 | $67,500 | $148,000 |
Green = lowest unit price · ● = unit price ≤ $1.00 · "missing" = line peers quoted, this bidder didn't.
Ask the bidder, keep the answer on the record.
Clarifications run as tracked, bidder-specific threads — not email chains that vanish when the estimator changes jobs.
- Questions drafted from the risk findings, one click to send
- Price revisions flagged and folded back into the leveling
- Every exchange lands in the award record
Confirm whether precast drainage manholes (604.11) are included in your price — the line does not appear in your proposal.
Items 603.02 and 603.05 are priced at $1.00 — confirm unit pricing or submit a revision.
Deterministic checks. Cited evidence. No black box.
Four pricing checks run as fixed rules — the same input always produces the same flag. AI reasoning is a separate, labeled layer; the two are never mixed, and every finding links back to the page it came from.
Unbalanced unit prices
Any line priced at $1.00 or less.
Peer outliers
Unit prices above 2× or below 0.5× the peer median.
Total-bid outliers
Bid totals more than 20% off the field.
Front-loaded mobilization
Mobilization above 10% of the bid total.
603.02 priced at $1.00 vs peer median $118.00
Bid Form p. 3 · Harlan Sitework · extraction ref Unit-price check
Mobilization is 13.4% of bid total
Bid Form p. 2 · Harlan Sitework · extraction ref Extraction QA
Exclusion: "rock excavation by others" — overlaps item 606.02
Proposal p. 7 · Bluffline Excavating · extraction ref AI reasoning
Every extracted value is inspectable. Every claim cites its source document and page. If it can't be traced, it isn't in the analysis.
Seven ways to rank the field. One person decides.
Pick the decision mode that matches the package. The recommendation shows its work — and when your estimator disagrees, the override is expected, captured, and part of the record.
Why this recommendation
Meridian Pipe & Precast · $1,311,450 leveled
- Docs complete, both addenda acknowledged, 2 minor exclusions
- No pricing flags across 42 line items
- Leveled total within 3.4% of the low bid, with the lowest risk profile in the field
Why not the low bid
Harlan Sitework · $1,108,750 raw
- 3 unit prices at $1.00 shift $177,550 of cost into other items
- 4 exclusions, including dewatering and trench safety
- Leveled cost $1,301,200 — within 0.8% of the recommendation, at materially higher risk
Award either way. Overrides require a category and a reason — the disagreement becomes part of the package record, not a lost argument. The estimator makes the call; the software remembers why.
The decision is only done when the paperwork is.
Fifteen documents generated from the package data — award documents for the subs, reasoning reports for your file. Real .docx, populated from the leveling, the findings, and the decision.
Award & handoff documents
Reasoning reports
Award with a record your team can defend later.
Heavy-civil general contractors.
Built for GCs receiving sub bids on highway, bridge, and infrastructure packages — where scope is contested, bids run 5–15 deep per package, and bid day matters.
Works in any U.S. state from day one — leveling runs on your own bids, no government data required. DOT pay-item baselines are pre-built for New York and New Jersey, with more states added as partners come online.
Bring a live bid package. We'll level it with you.
Bid Reasoner is in private beta with a small group of heavy-civil GCs. Founding partners get founder-direct onboarding, founding partner pricing, and no per-seat fees — you pay for usable bid-package outcomes. Bring a package you're bidding now, or a recent buyout, and we'll run it together.
Prefer a call? Book a demo →
Go deeper on the piece you're stuck on.
Deep-dives into the parts of the workflow heavy-civil GCs search for by name.
Bid leveling software →
Normalize 5–15 mixed-format subcontractor bids to your scope and make every bidder apples-to-apples.
Bid comparison software →
Put every bidder side-by-side in one ranked matrix — sort by price, scope, schedule, or risk.
Bid tabulation →
Auto-build the bid tab straight from the sub bid PDFs — no more hand-keyed Excel.
Subcontractor bid analysis →
Score every bidder across six dimensions, with page-cited evidence and four deterministic risk flags.
Scope gap analysis →
Find the items nobody quoted — and the scope creep — across every bid, before you award.
Award memo software →
Auto-generate the reasoned award memo and audit trail that defend your subcontractor pick.
Heavy-civil estimating →
The sub-bid evaluation layer of precon — it complements HeavyBid and B2W, not replaces them.
DOT bid leveling →
Level the sub bids on your state-DOT projects in any US state — every bidder normalized against peer median, no government data required.